November is now done and with the passing of Thanksgiving comes the Christmas season and lots of consumer spending. Hopefully consumer confidence will remain high and the retailers will have a Merry Christmas for their owners, shareholders, and employees. Consumer spending, especially during the holidays, makes up a good portion of the US’s GDP.

Well, let’s do the numbers and see how I fared in November:

AWP $ 50.00
BGY $ 38.00*
CHW $ 21.00*
CIK $ 22.00*
CLM $ 46.52*
DHY $ 38.50
DMF $ 12.30
DSM $ 22.83
EAD $ 9.03
EDF $ 45.00*
EHI $ 26.60
EXG $114.00*
NCV $ 45.50
OIA $ 4.30
PFN $ 36.00
RA $ 69.85
VFL $ 15.00
WDR $138.00
ZTR $ 33.90
TOTAL $788.33 est.

* Includes Return of Capital

Hmmph. While November’s $788.33 is nothing to complain about, it’s not a $900+ month that I was expecting. Checking with dividend.com, I discovered that FGB’s payout got pushed from late November to early December, so that’s why it wasn’t included in November’s total dividend income. This means that November’s total was a little smaller and December’s total will be a little bigger. On the bright side, thanks to my buy of 100 FGB shares last month, FGB’s coming payout (which will be December 1st, so it will only be delayed a couple days) will be a bit bigger. 🙂

So overall November was a good month. No dividend cuts occurred, so that’s certainly a plus.

A slight digression: For years I’ve used Google’s Finance page to monitor the general stock market and specific stocks of interest and to also screen stocks. But, like a lot of people (but also a lot did see it coming), I was surprised Wednesday morning to find that Google revamped their Finance section and dropped the portfolio page. Yeah, I was NOT happy about that change. Thanks Google. 😛

What free alternative(s) will I use now? Well, so far I’ve found Wikivest, Wallmine, and MarketWatch. Normally I’d just switch to Yahoo! Finance but it’s not what it once was. However, I’m not totally giving up on it. I learned of a clever little “hack” for Yahoo! Finance that lists the current market price of stocks plus some basic info about them. Simply copy and paste the following URL into your browser, but replace the ticker symbols (ohi,fgb,ra in this example) with your own, and then bookmark the page for future reference.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/ohi,fgb,ra/view/v1

None of the above alternatives are a drop-in replacement of Google Finance, but they’re good places for me to start. It will take some time for me to cobble together a new toolset to substitute for the experience of the Google Finance page. Ideally, I’d like a free portfolio page that doesn’t require a login (ugh!), reports the current market and its gainers and losers of the day, displays the current prices of stocks in my portfolio as well as stocks of interest, has a good screener, and provides sufficiently detailed info about individual stocks. That’s not too much to ask for, right? 🙂

If you’ve been affected by the Google Finance revamp, what site(s) do you now use or plan on using?

Image Credit: jarmoluk (pixabay.com)