Weekly Roundup - August 27, 2016

Curated list of articles on dividend growth investing, financial independence, freedom and passive income
Happy Weekend!  Check out what's been going on in my world and some of the best articles from around the blogosphere.
Our daughter just continues to grow and learn and explore more and more every day.  It's awesome to see early childhood development first hand.  Lately she's been all about mommy and wants to cuddle up with her most of the afternoon.  But whenever she's awake and not in cuddle mode she's becoming more and more interactive every day.   



As far as the portfolio goes it was a pretty quiet week for action, but lots of thinking has been going on.  One thing that surprised me a bit was the strong quarterly earnings announcement from Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) yet they kept the dividend the same.  They still have quite a long time to raise before their new-ish streak is in jeopardy, but the departure from the smaller raises every 2 quarters surprised me.  Especially since the earnings report showed really good signs.  I'll have to dig into this one soon to see what's up.

I've also been thinking about what to do with some of my holdings and am thinking of trimming or closing some positions over the coming weeks.  For two of the positions it's primarily high valuation levels in relation to rather unimpressive results over the last several years.  Think declining revenues on top of the currency exchange issues.  But the dividend raises keep coming so why mess with a good thing?

The other position is one that I knew was going to be more volatile because it's a cyclical industry, but they haven't even been giving token increases.  They've paid the same dividend for 9 straight quarters, although the annual payment streak is still in tact and will tick forward 1 more year if they increase the next payment which should be announced next week.  They're at a trough in the business which is never a good time to unload on the shares if you're confident they can weather the storm.  So I'm a bit torn on that one.

I also still have some shares of my previous employer from the ESPP they ran.  As most of you know I worked on the upstream, E&P, side of the oil field which has been hurting badly for the last 2 years or so and I have no idea when things will turn around.  The shares I have are getting close to break-even so I'm very tempted to go on and close out the position or serially writing call options until they get called away.  

It would free up capital which is a good thing, but it's a constant give and take battle in my mind because there's the potential for a huge rebound in share price whenever the oil field does turn around.  At this time I'm leaning towards serial call writing to generate extra income/return rather than an outright sale.  

Thoughts on any of the potential portfolio changes?

On to the Roundup

In case you missed them, here's the posts from Passive-Income-Pursuit over the past week.
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.  You can also follow me on Facebook or Pinterest if you prefer those methods to get your daily fix and keep up to date on happenings around here.

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!

How Would You Answer This Question? by Dividend Life

Look What I Found by Income Surfer

How To Set Up Your Own Perpetual Income Machine by Dividend Growth Investor

What Is The Fastest & Best Way For  A Working Class Person To Become A Multi-Millionaire? by Sure Dividend

Recent Sell: Deere & Company by DivGro

7 Habits of Highly Effective Dividend Investors by Simply Safe Dividends

Crossing $3,000 in Projected Dividend Income by Dividend Diplomats

Our Pre-Retirement To Do List by Our Next Life

A Comprehensive Look At Dividend Growth Stock Valuations Sector By Sector: Part 2 by Chuck Carnevale on Seeking Alpha

Buffett's Best Insights by Financially Integrated

How Volatility Can Work In Your Favor by A Wealth of Common Sense

The Nude Selfie of Personal Finance by Retire Before Dad

Option Assignment - IAMGold Corp by Roadmap2Retire

Recent Buy - Flowers Foods (FLO) by Captain Dividend

My First Investment In A Private Business by Freedom 35

How Much Time & Money Do I Need To Start Investing In Real Estate on Bigger Pockets

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 via FreeDigitalPhotos

Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing my research post JC. It sounds like you guys are doing great, and the little one is growing/learning. I'll give you a call mid week and try and catch up, once things are caught up on my end. Have a great weekend buddy
    -Bryan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bryan,

      Things are going pretty good here at home although we're now back to burning hot again. I don't think I have anything coming up during the week so I should be free.

      All the best.

      Delete
  2. JC, thanks for including a link to my recent sell of DE -- I'm targeting some of the weaker performers in my portfolio because I'm consolidating in order to prep for options trading.

    As to your question about portfolio changes -- I think you have a sound strategy and you're asking the right questions. Like, why change things if dividend raises continue to come... Also, I agree with your approach to squeeze income out of your ESPP shares by selling calls. If you do it with bit of a margin between strike and current price, you should be able to repeat the trade a few times before the shares get called away.

    All the best and happy investing!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ferdi,

      I've wanted to be more active with options so DE's struggle and the possibility of closing the position out for a small gain is enticing. That way I can invest that capital into other positions to build them up and start using options or likely use a completely new company that I can serially write puts and calls on. Although I need to find a company that's relatively range bound in it's share price and very stable and not already in my portfolio, so the pickings are pretty slim.

      All the best and have a great weekend.

      Delete
  3. Hi Pip,
    Not sure if you have done your research on TD Bank yet, but they only increased their dividend once in 2015 also - so it appears that they are now on an "annual" cycle.
    Cheers,
    MG

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MG,

      Thanks for catching that and you are indeed correct. They've actually adopted an annual increase cycle since 2014. I guess I just assumed they were still keeping with the two smaller raises. My spreadsheets only tell me the annual increase %'s and not every single increase % although it could be changed to do so but the data set gets huge in some cases like O for example.

      Guess the mystery is solved and the lack of a dividend increase makes complete sense now.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  4. Thanks for the mention, JC.
    Regarding TD, the annual increase is what the company has forecasted after multiple increases in previous years. The other Canadian banks are still doing twice a year smaller increases, but TD moved to a single annual increase last year, I think.

    R2R

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. R2R,

      Yeah I looked into TD's history and somehow completely forgot they switched to annual raises back in 2014. If BNS does keep with their 2 increase schedule then I expect to get two raises early next week which will be a nice way to end the otherwise quiet month.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  5. Hi JC,
    Thanks for including my post in your weekly roundup - I'm always honored to be included!

    On a slightly different note, I was wondering if you're planning to manage any investments for your daughter and start that snowball rolling early?

    Best wishes,
    -DL

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DL,

      No problem. I liked the post because it posed the same question/results but in different manners to get you to think.

      For the rest of this year I don't expect to get anything started for our daughter because we're still dealing with a lot of transitions. But yes eventually I'll start a small portfolio for her and manage it in the meantime to get the compounding started early.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  6. Thanks for including me! Hop you have a great week ahead!

    DGI

    ReplyDelete
  7. With inflation tame, no one wants to increase dividends. Keeping the dividend the same, in a deflationary environment, is like raising the dividend.

    ReplyDelete

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