September is now over and we’re firmly moving into fall. Tree leaves are turning various shades of brown, orange, and yellow and the days are getting shorter. My car is covered with dew every morning, and I find myself wearing a jacket more frequently. Here in the northern Oregon/southern Washington region, the summers are usually pretty mild, but not this year. June was as bad as August, and a part of me was looking forward to the cooler yet sunny early weeks of Autumn. The other thing I looked forward to at the end of September was my dividend portfolio’s payouts for the month. Yeah!
So let’s do the numbers and see September’s dividend payout results:
BGY $ 49.00*
CLM $ 70.29*
CIK $ 22.00*
DHY $ 42.00
DMF $ 15.75
DSM $ 22.83
EHI $ 19.25
EXG $121.95
HHY $ 37.50
HQL $ 58.00
HTR $ 38.00
??? $ 1.05**
NCV $ 63.00
OIA $ 4.10
PFN $ 36.00
VFL $ 19.50
TOTAL $620.22
* Includes Return of Capital.
** My employer’s stock, which shall remain anonymous.
Another $600+ month! Nice! That’s three in a row this year. While not as high as May’s record high of $668.58, September’s $620.22 is a decent payout total for the month, so I’m satisfied.
September saw RSO completing its 4:1 reverse stock split. Fortunately, RSO’s dividend payouts will be completely unaffected, because while the price may have been quartered, its dividend quadrupled.
The end of September also marks the end of Q3. Total dividend income for Q3 was $1869.56, a 1.02% increase over Q2. Such little growth is due to the slight cut due to CLP’s conversion to CLM, and to my cutting back the little dividend matching program I ty to maintain, so I couldn’t invest as much as I normally could. I hope Q4 proves to better than Q3.
For October, NCV’s dividend cut from 9 cents per share to 6,5 cents, will take effect. My recent buy of 170 shares of EHI goes a long way towards offsetting the damage to dividend income, and it delayed me a month to reach my next projected monthly dividend income goal of $633.33 per month. Unfortunately, my recent EHI buy was done the day after its ex-div date, so I was too late to benefit from those 170 new shares to payout in September.
Overall, I think September was a so-so month. It wasn’t bad because I cleared the $600 mark again, but the cut to NCV’s dividend and the EHI buy to offset the damage made it a month of no progress in advancing my dividend income. I certainly hope October proves to be better than September.
Image Credit: jarmoluk (pixabay.com)
Are all of these closed ended funds?
Despite their high yields, do the distributions tend to fluctuate much or remain relatively flat?
I ask because I owned EHI many years ago and see their monthly distributions are about the same.
Best,
Karl
Thanks for visiting Karl. Yes, the vast majority of stocks in my portfolio are closed-end funds or exchange-traded funds. The few that aren’t are RSO and AWP (high yielding REITs), my employer’s stock (a Fortune 100 corporation), and CTCM (a Russian media company) which currently has zero distributions.
Yes, most of the distributions of stocks I buy are fairly flat. When researching potential stocks to buy, I completely avoid stocks with distributions that are erratic in frequency and/or payout amounts. I aim for stocks with dividends that are regular (preferably monthly) and predictable (staying constant or steadily increasing). One can never predict dividend cuts, but I do try to find stocks that don’t have a history of frequent cuts.
EHI seems very promising, as its distributions have been constant since 2010 and they stayed the course and avoided dividend cuts throughout the turbulence of the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession. Clearly the fund’s managers aren’t quick to cut distributions when the market becomes volatile. EHI has gone up a little since my last buy, but I think it’s still a good buy right now. For more of my views on EHI, see my first posting about EHI.
Thanks again for visiting, and come back again soon.