October 2019 Dividend Stock Purchases

Another month has passed us by and for those of us in the Midwest, arctic temperatures, massive snowfalls, and dangerous driving conditions are just around the corner.

On that note, we'll be examining a much more upbeat and exciting topic - which is of course, my dividend stock purchase activity for the month of October. Let's delve into it, shall we?

As illustrated above, I started October by adding to my position in Energy Transfer (ET) by purchasing a unit at $13.00. I added to my a unit to my position in ET two more times in my Robinhood portfolio, and opened a position in ET in my Webull account, purchasing a couple more units, bringing my total unit count to 29 to end the month.

In total, this increased my annual forward distributions by $6.10 across the 5 units that I added. My cost basis on each unit for the month was $12.66 against the $1.22 annualized distribution, for a yield of 9.64%. For a more comprehensive rationale on my decision to add to my position in ET, I would refer interested readers to my most recent article on the company on Seeking Alpha.

The next purchase for the month was UnitedHealth Group (UNH). I began the month of October with a bang, opening a position in 3 different companies in the first couple days of the month.

My 1 share starter position in UNH was initiated at a cost of $216.68, for an entry yield of 1.99%. I detailed my thoughts on what would eventually support my decision to open a position in UNH in a guest post on Sick Economics for those that would like a more detailed analysis of the company.

This purchase increased my annual forward dividends by $4.32.

The second position that I would open during the month of October was Wells Fargo (WFC).

I opened a 5 share starter position in WFC at an average cost basis of $48.58 a share, for an entry yield of 4.20%. This purchase boosted my annual forward dividends by $10.20.

Yet again, I would refer interested readers to my recent article on WFC on Seeking Alpha.

The third position that I opened during the month of October was Lockheed Martin (LMT).

My 1 share starter position in LMT was initiated at a cost of $375.45, for an entry yield of 2.56%, which increased my annual forward dividends by $9.60.

I also covered my thoughts which led to me initiate a position in LMT the week prior to my article being published on Seeking Alpha for those interested in an in-depth analysis of the company.

The final position that I initiated in my taxable accounts came in the last week of October, with a 2 share purchase to initiate a position in Visa (V).

For readers that have been paying particularly close attention to my blog posts and my articles on Seeking Alpha, they'll notice that over the past 4 months or so, I've very positively mentioned V at least 3 separate times while writing about other companies.

While I've known V to be a great company for years now, it wasn't until I was writing an article discussing my first major investing revelation in a blog post a few months back that I began to truly appreciate the likes of companies such as V.

Until I actually did the math and looked at the payback periods on a company like V versus AT&T (T) and the yield on cost of both after a couple decades, I never fully realized how necessary rapid dividend growers like V are to a dividend growth portfolio.

T may bring the massive dividend at this point in time, but there's no doubt V brings tremendous growth through the secular tailwind of actual cash becoming a rarer and less preferred commodity to pay for goods and services.

I've since adopted more of an affinity to evenly split my investments between low yield/high dividend growth, moderate yield/moderate dividend growth, and high yield/low dividend growth companies.

In the days ahead, I anticipate writing an article on Seeking Alpha with a more detailed analysis of what led me to specifically choose V as a fast growth investment now that we've discussed in a bit more detail my recent shift in dividend investing strategy.

My 2 share starter position in V was initiated at an average cost per share of $178.69, for an entry yield of 0.67%, adding $2.40 in annual forward dividends.

The other activity in my investment portfolio, but more specifically in my retirement account, is that I I was able to add 3.806 shares of my mutual fund holding, CAIBX during the month of October.

This increased my annual forward dividends by $8.14 (assuming the same $0.14 special dividend that was paid last year).

Summary:

My annual forward dividends/distributions increased were boosted by $40.76 due to the $1,499.71 in capital that I deployed during the month of October.

This equates to an average yield of 2.72%, which demonstrates my commitment to adding more of the classic companies when one thinks of a DGI portfolio to balance out the heavy hitters in the portfolio in terms of yield.

The four new positions that I initiated this month brings the number of whole share positions in my portfolio to 42 while I also own 23 different names in my 50 stock M1 Finance portfolio with fractional shares, bringing the total number of stocks in my portfolio to 65 and CAIBX.

Overall, the portfolio continues to make massive strides in being built to the ultimate goal of about 100 different stocks.

At the time of writing, the only dividend/distribution increase that I have received during the month of October is the 0.6% increase in Enterprise Products Partner's quarterly distribution from $0.44/unit to $0.4425/unit.

I do believe that Iron Mountain (IRM) will increase its dividend in the course of the next few days, however.

At any rate, my annual forward dividends/distributions increased $40.95 as a result of my investments and EPD's distribution increase.

Over the past month, I was able to increase my annual forward dividends/distributions by 5.7% from $717.51 to $758.46.

I will also have enough saved up to fully finance the purchase of a 3 to 4 year old car with less than 30k miles by early to mid-January in spite of my strong investments the last couple months.

Besides that, I will also have a small emergency fund built up by this spring and the ability to pay off my ~$2,000 in credit card debt that is interest free until next June.

Discussion:

Are you dreading the thought of winter weather as much as I am? Did you add any new names to your portfolio? How did you do in terms of deploying capital in the month of October?

Thanks for reading and I look forward to replying to any comments that you leave below!