October is behind us, time to check in on my portfolio. It’s the first day of November and the market is reaching all time highs again.
Last month was a slow month for me in the sense that I only made two purchases - both at the very last day of the month. These new buys were also additions to existing positions.
On October 31 I added 10 more shares of Kimberley-Clark (KMB) for a total of $1,118.
And on that same day I bought 50 additional shares of AT&T (T) for a total of $1,702.
Both stocks showed price weakness and I took this opportunity to increase my positions in them. Kimberley-Clark and AT&T are both Dividend Champions, with dividend increase streaks of 45 and 33 years respectively.
With these new buys my total number of KMB shares is now 35, and I rounded out my number of T shares to a nice 100 number.
I professed my love for investing in Dividend Champions, Contenders and Challengers in my introduction post on how to get started with Dividend Growth Investing (DGI).
With these new purchases I keep building my snowball and with each new stock purchase I increase my forward dividend income and get closer to achieving my investment goals.
So how did I progress in October?
For reasons of comparison: a year ago, at the end of October 2016, my portfolio consisted of 35 positions with a total value of $45,152.
At the end of October 2017 my portfolio consisted of 47 positions with a total market value of $106,856, a Year-on-Year (YoY) increase of 137%.
My YoY increase is shown in the graph below.
How was your October? Did you add new positions to your portfolio? Leave a comment/reply to share your thoughts!
Wow, it’s amazing how quickly your portfolio is growing! I wish my slow months were at least half as your October 😀
You’re doing great and I am sure that it will only get better with your snowball rolling 🙂
-BI
Thank you BI! Don’t worry about your slow months, just compare to them last year’s slow months or the year before that 🙂
Yoy how much did you put in? What’s the prIncipal?
I started investing with a principal of just ~$2,000. I have been making new contributions ever since and publish my purchases on this blog. See also my reply to David below.
Thanks
I certainly like the latest additions to your portfolio as I also have my eye on Kimberley-Clark and recently started a position in AT&T myself.
What got me interested is how much of the shown YoY increase is due to additional share purchases over the last twelve months and what is the result of the ongoing stock market rally. Could you unscramble those two metrics?
-David
Hi David,
Thank you - I hope you find a good entry point for KMB and T soon. As stated in my post, both have 30+ years of dividend increases.
My YoY portfolio increase over the last 12 months has been 61,704.
Breaking this down by source: 52,665 was due to new contributions, 2,773 in received dividends and 6,266 of share price increases.
Thanks for stopping by (from Germany I presume?)
Great update. I like the new buys. KMB has been one I’ve never purchased, not sure why. But, I’m long AT&T. I just added 100 more shares a few weeks ago. Best of luck in November.
IH,
Thanks for that. KMB remains attractively priced but I already have a significant position. Also loaded up on The more, and that is one company I could even add more of.
Both are great companies with long dividend histories.
Cheers