Well, I hope you had a good October and Halloween wasn’t too scary. What scared me was the market’s rapid decline in the final days of the month. My portfolio’s value dropped over 7%, so my Halloween had an extra dose of fear. But the elections, while not all completely resolved, have dissipated the air of uncertainty that hung over the stock market. As a result, my dividend portfolio’s value recovered.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that markets HATE uncertainty. The first time I learned this was in 1990 during and after the run-up to the Gulf War. During the Desert Shield military build-up, the price of gas increased by more than 50%. The oil market was very uncertain about how the crisis would play out. When the Gulf War started, the price of gasoline dropped almost overnight to its pre-crisis price. Once the oil market knew which way things would go, the uncertainty disappeared and prices quickly returned to normal. My point being this: when the markets are generally uncertain, there are investment opportunities to be had.

So how did my October dividends turn out? Let’s do the numbers and see.

AWP $ 44.00
BGY $ 33.80*
CHW $ 21.00
CIK $ 22.50*
CLM $ 46.33*
CODI $144.00
DHY $ 28.88*
EAD $ 9.07
EDF $ 20.00*
EHI $ 26.80*
EXG $ 92.40*
NCV $ 29.75
PFN $ 36.00
PNNT $120.00
ZTR $ 24.00*
TOTAL $698.53

* Includes Return of Capital

$698.53? That was soooo close to crossing the $700 mark! Still, that’s not a bad showing for the quarter’s first month.

The only dividend cut was felt by EAD, as its dividend was slightly trimmed from 5.71 cents per share to 5.67 cents per share. True it’s a tiny little cut, but as I have mentioned before, tiny cuts add up.

Because I needed the cash, I sold off my remaining shares of EAD in October. First 20 shares at $7.4838 per share, then 60 shares at $7.3217 per share.

Overall, October was a decent month and I’m not too disappointed with it.

Image Credit: jarmoluk (pixabay.com)