Well, April is over and done. Spring is finally here as the rain is becoming less frequent and the sunny days are becoming more frequent. The country is still in lockdown, virus fatalities have risen exponentially from 4,054 on April 1 to 62,175 on April 30 and will only get worse. The nation’s economy is still in suspension, and the longer it lasts the deeper and more severe the recession/depression will persist and the more difficult the recovery will be. I’m no prognosticator, so I’m not going to speculate about how the transition out of this situation will play out. I can be certain that some industries will recover quicker than others and some will struggle and falter.
On a personal level, my portfolio has recovered a bit from the panic that gripped investors in early March, but it will be a long slow crawl for my portfolio to regain its January valuation. I did get my stimulus check in late April, but that’s earmarked for my freelance business’s future quarterly taxes (Uncle Sam is paying me to pay Uncle Sam. So much for stimulating the economy.).
Well, the dividends have all rolled in for April, so let’s do the numbers and see how they added up
AWP $ 44.00
BGY $ 33.80*
CHW $ 21.00*
CIK $ 22.50*
CLM $ 46.33
CODI $144.00
DHY $ 28.88
EAD $ 9.54
EDF $ 42.50*
EHI $ 26.80
EXG $ 92.40*
NCV $ 36.75
PFN $ 36.00
PNNT $180.00
RA $ 7.96
ZTR $ 33.90
TOTAL $805.96
* Includes Return of Capital
Ouch! While $805.96 is nothing to complain about, it’s well below the usual performance of the quarter’s first month. This is due to NRZ delaying its payout until next month, so that really hurt. I haven’t had a first month of the quarter this bad since July 2016‘s $782.60. Hopefully future quarters’ first month will be better.
The anticipated dividend cuts haven’t arrived yet, but I’m sure they’re just around the corner. There’s always a bit of a time lag between when the market crashes hard and when the dividend cuts occur, so we’ll see how the next 2-3 months play out.
Needing cash, I again sold some more shares of RA in April. I sold off 40 shares at $14.71 on April 7th and then my final 40 shares at $15.0144 on April 22.
Overall, April was definitely a less than stellar month.
Image Credit: jarmoluk (pixabay.com)