Half of 2024 is in the books and I am able to restart my monthly updates of my dividend growth journey. It’s been a while but the journey continuous (and never stopped). With growth stocks reaching new highs lifting the Nasdaq and S&P to all time highs the dividend journey can be put under scrutiny. Nonetheless, it is an investment strategy for the long run and I am committed to stick to my strategy.
Dividend Income
In the month of June, I received a total of $1,159.29 in dividends from 24 different companies. My monthly income is well above the 1K mark. Year to date the total dividend income amounts to $7,878 with the second half of the year to go.
I had only one dividend increase by United Health Group (UNH) from $1.88 to $2.10 (+11.7%) adding $17.60 to my PADI.
My Projected Annual Dividend Income has increased to $16,371 with a short position on the SPY (-200 shares) and two long positions on ACN (+200 shares) and NKE (+1000 shares) due to options assignment. I sell options against them with the objective to close these positions.
In the dividends sheet you can follow my detailed dividend income table.
Dividend Safety
I hold 20 stocks of the highest dividend safety score category from Simply Safe Dividends (81 or higher) and my weighted average safety score is 64.8.
Dividend Safety Score of all my positions:
Options Income
June was a very successful month with $20,031 of income and $13,457 of cash flow. This was my second highest income month ever. My total options income since 2020 has now accumulated to $148,250 before taxes. This helps me to fuel my dividend portfolio.
You can see my options trades on the Options Page.
Portfolio Update
My total account value increased by 3.1% from $227.096 to $234.199, leading it to a new all-time high while options positions temporarily impact me negatively. My long-term goal remains to build up a solid portfolio of high-quality dividend growth stocks.
I started a new position in Visa (V) in three different buys on the 6th at $275.04, the 12th at $270.32 and the 26th at $267.15 with five shares each of them. At the end of June, I held 15 shares of Visa (V). With a quarterly dividend $0.52 per share this adds 31$ to my PADI and has a starting yield of 0.76%.
Visa (V) is one of the highest quality stocks and I consider it undervalued at current prices. It has a quality score of 4.90 on my own scoring system and ranks first place. The starting yield is low but both dividend growth rate and earnings growth in the future are high making it an ideal candidate for great long-term total return.
I also managed to close my short position of (DJT) of 200 shares on June 18th as they were called away $39.00 with the share price being around $31. I am happy about this transaction as the interest for this short position were just insane. I did make some good options income but was penalized by the interest.
Closing comments
The markets are climbing higher and higher and my short SPY position is running massively into the red. I will still hold on to it but selling puts so far out of the money bears little premium. Nike (NKE) is the other pain point in my portfolio making it the largest position which I am trying to get rid of by selling further calls.
My overall option plays run very well and each month this year has been very profitable. I remain more patient and was a bit unlucky with one of the SMCI puts that I closed with a large loss and did not manage to sell further out. Just the next day the stock sky rocketed and I did not recover about 10k.
I also focus on building my portfolio more on the dividend growth stocks with high quality and very good total return prospects. Soon I will provide a full portfolio update.
Until next time and let’s keep the dividends coming.