So ends May. On a personal level, May was okay with nothing really major worth noting. With one solid week of warm weather, I was able to get some stuff done outdoors. Unfortunately, the month ended on a bitter note with civil unrest sweeping the nation. Being an election year, I’m sure the politics of it are operating in the background, and so I have to wonder what kind of “October Surprise” is awaiting us. So far this year the nation is grappling with a deadly pandemic that’s taken over 100,000 lives, recovering from an severe economic disruption, and is now wracked by civil unrest. Yeah, 2020 is shaping up to be the nation’s most crappy year in living memory. What’s next? A natural disaster? A major war?
Some words about my portfolio. From the May 1st Dow closing at 23723 to the May 31st closing at 25383, the market continued its slow but steady recovery. When the market drop was at it worst in March, my dividend investing portfolio’s value was down approximately 50% (yikes!). But at the end of May, it was only down approximately 27%, so my portfolio is steadily recovering. That’s good, but it’s also bad because the window of opportunity to lock in some great yields is shrinking as well.
The news media (not that I pay that much attention to) has been carping a lot about how the stock market has been making a solid recovery while the economy is still in the dumps with record unemployment and many businesses struggling to survive. What the financial journalists don’t get (or don’t want to get) is that the stock market is NOT the economy. The stock market is more about what investors expect the economy to be like several months down the road, not as it is right now. Plus the market just doesn’t make rational sense. If it did, we would all be richer.
Well, let’s do the numbers and see how my dividend income shaped up for May.
AWP $ 44.00
BGY $ 33.80
CHW $ 21.00*
CIK $ 22.50*
CLM $ 46.33*
DHY $ 28.88
EAD $ 9.46
EDF $ 20.00*
EHI $ 26.80
EXG $ 92.40*
FGB $114.75
NCV $ 29.75
OHI $150.75
PFN $ 36.00
ZTR $ 33.90
NRZ $ 16.00
TOTAL $726.32
* Includes Return of Capital
Eh, $726.32 isn’t much to brag about. Not that I’m complaining, it was a solid month for sure, but the total came in lower than usual for the second month of the quarter (as explained below).
Unfortunately, as I had expected, dividend cuts had their impact. EDF slashed its dividend from $0.17 per share to $0.08. NCV trimmed its dividend back from $0.0525 per share to $0.0425. Finally, NRZ cut its dividend to the bone and then some, severely cutting it’s quarterly dividend from $0.50 per share to $0.05, a 90% reduction. Yeah, these cuts are going to hurt quite a bit.
With its dividend so deeply cut, I don’t think NRZ is worth holding anymore. Thus, needing cash again, I sold 80 shares of NRZ on May 27th at $7.36 per share.
Overall, May was a solid, albeit somewhat diminished, month for dividend income. Hopefully June won’t see as noticeable a decline.
Image Credit: jarmoluk (pixabay.com)