Weekly Roundup - January 30, 2016

Did you really expect anything else to close out what was a crazy month of January?  You just knew that we'd be doing anything but remaining flat over the week.  The S&P 500 added 1.75% for the week and had a whopping 2.48% gain on Friday alone.  Oil staged a comeback as well and is now around $33.74 after rumors of production cuts from OPEC/Saudi Arabia.  I for one would love to see some cuts to increase oil prices and bring about some more stability, and hopefully income, from my day job.  Who knows what February will bring for both the stock and oil markets?

Blogging/Writing

Work for me means a chance to get a lot more writing done.  That's one of the huge benefits of my job because as long as things are running smooth I can focus on other tasks between having to do some work each day.  I got the first two parts of my series on the CCC list done and will get the final two chapters finished this weekend.

I know this seems to be the case each and every week but man do I have a lot of ideas for posts.  This week brought about 5 more ideas and now I just need to get them all written.  There's days where the creative juices are really flowing for me and I try to take advantage of those as much as possible because other days I can't focus as all.  I would love to be able to take 2 weeks off and just get all of my drafts/ideas written out.

Self Improvement

I've finished the cleanse phase of the 24 Day Challenge from Advocare and my body feels better and looking at pictures I think I've lost weight.  Unfortunately, in my rush to get back to work I had forgotten my measurement tool to see if I actually lost any inches and since I don't bring a scale with me I can only go off visual confirmation and how my body feels.

I've been eating healthy and relatively cheaply which bodes well for the waistline and the pocketbook.  Although I've slacked some on doing yoga and kettlebell exercises because my sleep schedule has been messed up several times this past week.  I can't wait to get these habits instilled into my routine so I'm used to it and get my body to crave both healthier eating and exercising.

Portfolio News

There were no purchases this week and likely won't be for a while but the dividends kept rolling in which is always great to see.  Even better is dividend increases which HCP provided.  That raise marked their 31st consecutive year of announcing a higher dividend which is fantastic.

There were lots of earnings announcements from my holdings and the general theme was misses on revenue but beats on earnings.  Unfortunately that sucked a lot of the value from positions such as 3M, Johnson & Johnson, V.F. Corporation and PepsiCo which all looked pretty cheap at the beginning of the week but not so much now.  Oh well, at some point the markets will dip again.

On to the Roundup

In case you missed them, here's the posts from Passive-Income-Pursuit this past week.

• Data Mining the CCC List: Part 1 - The Challengers on Seeking Alpha
• Data Mining the CCC List: Part 2 - The Contenders on Seeking Alpha
• Dividend Growth Investing at Work - Health Care and Real Estate: 2 Great Trends for the Long Term

Also, be sure to sign up to receive posts via email and to follow me on Twitter@JC_PIP so you don't miss anything.  I also started a Facebook page to give people another option for keeping up to date on posts and happenings with the blog.

Once again I'd like to say thanks to each and every one of you that read, commented, and shared posts from here this past week.  I think this dividend growth investing and financial independence community is amazing and the openness from everyone is awesome.  Thanks again!

Now on to the links!

The Rise and Fall of Dividend Champions by Dividend Life

The REAL Truth by FI Fighter

February 2016 Stock Considerations by DivHut

Safe Haven Investing by Roadmap2Retire

Dividend Aristocrats Part 50: Johnson & Johnson by Sure Dividend

The advantages of being a long term dividend investor by Dividend Growth Investor

McCormick & Company (MKC): Uninterrupted Dividends Since 1925 and a 30 Year Growth Streak by Simply Safe Dividends

Budgeting in Retirement - 2016 Edition by Root of Good

The Magic is Gone: Brother 29 Tells All on Financial Advisors on Retire29

Minimizing Your Housing Costs by Our Next Life

Short Term Thinking with Long Term Capital by A Wealth of Common Sense

What can you buy with dividends? by MoneyWatch101

Wells Fargo Stock Long Term Results by The Conservative Income Investor

Also, if you're looking for investment ideas, A Frugal Family's Journey keeps a list of stock analyses and recent buys from fellow bloggers.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Image courtesy of Gubgib on FreeDigitalPhotos.net.