In September 2017, I received slightly over $100K as a result of the commuted value of my pension plan. I decided to invest 100% of this money into dividend growth stocks. Each month, I publish my results. I don’t do this to brag, I do this to show you it’s possible to build a portfolio during an all-time high market. The market will crash… eventually. In the meantime, I’d rather cash some juicy dividends!
Portfolio holdings
Numbers are as at June 30th 2018:
Canadian portfolio (CAD)
| Company Name | Ticker | Market Value |
| Alimentation Couche-Tard | ATD.B.TO | $4,911.46 |
| Andrew Peller | ADW.A.TO | $7,075.75 |
| Royal Bank | RY.TO | $5,939.40 |
| Enbridge | ENB.TO | $7,567.00 |
| Fortis | FTS.TO | $4,159.97 |
| Lassonde Industries | LAS.A.TO | $5,879.79 |
| Magna International | MG.TO | $5,352.20 |
| Cash | $15,762.11 | |
| Total | $56,647.69 |
As you can see, there was a lot of movement over there. Yup, I sold my positions in both Canopy Growth (WEED.TO) and Shopify (SHOP). Besides that, I can tell I’m happy about Enbridge which is finally showing a positive return in my portfolio. Last week, the company announced they received approval for their Line 3 project. This means that the $7B project will go ahead and my 10% dividend raise will happen in 2019!
Trades: SELL 40 shares of SHOP.TO @ $200
I previously explained how I use stop sells from time to time. I use this strategy mostly to protect my profit when I make riskier trades. Around 90% of my portfolio is built around my 7 dividend investing principles. However, I use a few dollars as “play money” when I see a good opportunity. This is what happened when I saw Shopify shares falling from the sky after the Citron report back in fall of 2017. Now that the stock has surged by more than 50%, I had no intention of keeping volatile tech stocks that doesn’t pay dividend. This is why I put a stop sell order at $200. If the stock kept going up, I would have just smiled. Now that it has dropped, I’m still smiling!
Trades: SELL 185 shares of WEED.TO @ $40
The same thing happened with my shares of Canopy Growth. This was just a pure play on the cannabis industry hype. This stock went up and down in my portfolio several times. After making 33% within 5 months, I told myself it was good enough. Another reason why I put those two stop sells was that I’m taking time off during summer time, and I didn’t want to follow those two companies.
Numbers are as of June 30th 2018:
U.S. portfolio (USD)
| Company Name | Ticker | Market Value |
| Apple | AAPL | $5,738.41 |
| Disney | DIS | $4,716.45 |
| Gentex | GNTX | $5,409.70 |
| Hasbro | HAS | $4,246.26 |
| Honeywell | HON | $4,609.60 |
| Lazard | LAZ | $4,988.82 |
| Microsoft | MSFT | $5,916.60 |
| Starbucks | SBUX | $4,152.25 |
| Texas Instruments | TXN | $5,512.50 |
| United Parcel Services | UPS | $3,930.51 |
| Visa | V | $6,622.50 |
| Cash | $349.94 | |
| Total | $55,843.60 |
Nothing much important happened during the last month with my US portfolio. Disney has entered into a bidding war against Comcast (CMCSA) for the Fox assets. DIS rose its price and passed another step in the process with regulation approval (conditional of selling some FOX sport network assets). It looks like the deal is going through and DIS will become a serious player in the streaming business in a couple of years. That’s exciting news!
Starbucks (SBUX) shares plummeted in June after the company announced the closing of 150 stores. Keep in mind that SBUX is opening 600 new stores per year in China, the 150 closing is just optimizing its presence in US territory. On top of that, management announced a robust dividend raise (again!).
Dividend income: $319.10 CAD
This was another great month with over $300 in dividend payments. After 6 months in 2018, my portfolio generated over $1,400 in dividends. I’m getting closer to an average dividend payment of $250/month. Now that I have $15,000 to invest in dividend paying stocks, I should be able to boost that number! Let’s take a look at which company paid me this month:
Canadian Holdings payouts: $197 CAD
- Fortis: $42.08
- Enbridge: $108.03
- Magna Intl: $29.88
- Lassonde: $17.01
U.S. Holding payouts: $93.21USD
- Visa: $10.50
- UPS: $33.67
- Honeywell: $23.84
- Microsoft: $25.20
Total payouts: $319.10 CAD
*I used a USD/CAD conversion rate of 1.31.
Since I started this portfolio in September 2017, I have received a total of $1,733.30 in dividend.
Final thoughts – Going on Vacation!
I’m taking 2 weeks off to travel across the Atlantic provinces with Freefall, our beloved RV. I’ll use this time cool off with my family, do some hiking and enjoy lobsters and crabs! I’ll be back mid-July with more stories and dividend plays! Enjoy!
Div Guy –
Wow, over $300 – nice job. Also with your play account – it makes sense to take and capture those profits now, especially if it doesn’t fit the overall/main strategy. You just reduced your risk and time with monitoring that investment. Congrats!
-Lanny
Thx Lanny!
It was a nice ride on both of them, but the whole point was to make a quick profit out of a specific situation (SHOP going down on a stupid report and WEED going up due to the hype around this sector).
Cheers,
Mike
Very nicely done my friend. That is a very nice month, over the $300 mark. That is some nice passive income.
Cheers
I hope I’ll be able to replicate this passive income each month now 🙂 With the new 15K to invest, I will buy more dividend growers!
Hi Mike,
Regarding your dividend income amount, what about the tax issue ? I mean do you have WHT (if yes, how much %) or do you have to include the yearly dividend amount in your Income tax ?
In Belgium (and yes I speak French) we have a current WHT rate of 30%, that’s changing a lot the point of view on the NET amount you get every quarter on US companies.
However that doesn’t’ change the long term perspective for the strong companies I believe they will still doing business in 20-30 years, I prefer paying some tax instead of never investing.
The good point is (currently) the profit made when you sold is free of tax but that’s a very short term profit/view or called also “gambling with stocks”, I’m not interested by this last choice 😉
Have a nice day,
George
Bonjour George!
We have a tax treaty with the US. All income generated in a retirement account is tax sheltered. Therefore, all dividends are paid in full in my account 🙂
I will pay taxes the day I withdraw the money from this account… which will be in 30 years from now.
Cheers,
10% ROI is amazing. Definitely makes sense to stay invested and ignore market gyrations. Congrats on your dividend income.
Thx!
I’m pretty happy about the results so far, I hope I will keep beating the market for the upcoming years!
Well done. Slow and steady.
Did you sell Amazon? I thought you had taken a position in the company.
No, I keep it. It’s my only non-paying dividend stock.
This update is only about my pension plan account. I also have a RESP and a RRSP account that I manage. It was just too much to track for a single post so I decided to focus on the pension account 🙂
Cheers,
Very solid numbers. Hitting the number of $300 for the first time is still a year away for me. Count your blessings, because you’re already halfway. The snowball will only get bigger and bigger. Congratulations!
I find it very interesting to track my dividend income from day 1. It clearly shows the power of dividend growth investing! I just can’t wait to compare my dividend payment year after year now!
Cheers,
Mike