Goodbye March, hello April! Here in the Pacific Northwest, winter’s grip has loosened a bit but has not entirely given way to spring. A mix of snow and rain is in the forcast for tonight, but soon the expected temperatures are predicted to rise a bit, with more rain.

In early March, the market got a bit scared by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the ripple effect it was starting to have on other banks. But the situation seems to have stabalized and as a result the market has recovered bit. The Fed’s recent hike of interest by 0.25% didn’t help things either, but that was a largely expected move.

Well, let’s do the numbers and see how March’s dividend income performed:

ARR $ 4.96
AWP $44.00
BGY $33.80*
CIK $22.50
CLM $49.12*
DHY $27.13
EDF $15.00*
EHI $26.80*
EXG $82.95*
NCV $29.75
PFN $32.31
USA $45.00
ZTR $24.00*
TOTAL $437.32

* Includes Return of Capital

Well, $437.32 isn’t tooooo bad, but it’s less than March totals of previous years (see Dividend Income for details).

Because I needed the cash (again), I sold off more stocks. I sold off the last 100 shares of PNNT for $5.7014/share, and later in March I sold 20 shares of OHI for $26.10/share.

Unfortunately, March did see one dividend cut. Considering its crazy high dividend yield, it came as no great surprise that ARR trimmed its dividend by 20% from 10 cents per share to 8 cents per share starting with its March payout. Given how the stock price has slipped a bit in March, the yield is still pretty good and I will continue to buy more shares of ARR.

In March I bought an additional 12 shares of ARR at $5.30/share for a total of 62 ARR shares. This only adds $0.96 to my projected monthly income, so it’s a tiny improvement but it will help mitigate future dividend cuts by other stocks.

Overall, March’s performance was a bit disappointing as the total was no longer what I consider a “non-trivial” amount.

Image Credit: jarmoluk (pixabay.com)