I love the end of May. The wet and cloudy days recede as the sunny days of June become more frequent with summer rapidly approaching. Regarding the stock market, May was another bumpy ride, but the downward trend seems to have slowed and has even reversed a little bit. There’s still talk of a recession later this year, but it’s not a certainty, so only time will tell if it will happen or not. We’re all feeling the impact of inflation taking its toll on buying power, as a dollar just doesn’t go quite as far as it did this time last year.

Well, let’s do the numbers and see how my dividend income performed in May:

AWP $44.00*
BGY $33.80*
CIK $22.50
CLM $72.32*
DHY $27.13
EDF $15.00*
EHI $26.80*
EXG $103.35
NCV $29.75*
OHI $117.25
PFN $32.31
ZTR $24.00*
TOTAL $548.21

* Includes Return of Capital

$548.21? Well, it could be worse. In my portfolio, the 2nd month of the quarter is always a low performer so May didn’t surprise me at all.

May saw a small flurry of trades in my portfolio, which is rather unusual. Using the cash from April’s FGB sale, I first bought 150 more shares of CLM at $10.80/share (“locking in” an eye-popping dividend yield of 20.09%!), then I bought 80 shares of NCV at $4.35/share, and finally bought 50 more shares of CIK at $2.70/share. Later, realizing that buying NCV was a mistake, I sold the 80 shares at $3.81/share, taking a slight loss (-$42). Needing the money (again), I sold off my 50 shares of CIK, eking out a miniscule $1.10 profit.

With money from the NCV sale, I bought 20 shares of ARMOUR Residential REIT, Inc. (ARR) at $7.40/share (“locking in” a sweet yield of 16.21%). Thanks to the CLM and ARR buys, my monthly dividend income increased by $29.12. Nice!

Fortunately, no dividend cuts affected May’s payouts, so that’s a small bright spot in an otherwise weak month.

Overall, May was a less than stellar month. But thanks to my latest buys, I’m looking forward to June’s dividend payouts.

Image Credit: jarmoluk (pixabay.com)