2018 Halfway Point: Portfolio Summary and Considerations

It has been a quick start to the year. The market has been topsy-turvy as it always has been and always will be. As an investor with a long-term mindset, I view volatility as a synonym for opportunity. Lower share prices mean larger starting dividend yields.

Going into the year, I professed my intention to double down on existing positions rather than initiating new ones. This strategy has been serving me well as it means considerably less maintenance overall; every new position requires additional research and bookkeeping in terms of tracking dividend payments.

Market Activity

This has easily been the most active period of my investing life. While in years past I have been content to build a cash position on the sidelines and patiently wait for opportunities, I philosophically made the paradigm shift to more focus instead on simply increasing dividend cash flows and targeting a fair price rather than a steal. With the market rising overall since the bottom in March 2009, serious bargains among high quality companies have become more difficult to find.

Nevertheless, I made a total of eleven stock purchases and three sales between January 1 and June 30 of this year:

Stock Purchases

Stock	Total Cost ($)	Total Shares	Total Buys	Quarterly Payment ($)	Annual Payment ($)
Corby Spirit and Wine Ltd. (CSW.B)	2,127.75	110	2	24.20	96.80
Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS)	4,419.75	55	3	45.10	180.40
Fortis Inc. (FTS)	3,383.20	80	2	34.00	136.00
Canadian Utilities (CU)	3,291.75	100	2	39.33	157.32
Hydro One Ltd. (H)	1,037.45	50	1	11.50	46.00
Metro, Inc. (MRU)	866.95	20	1	3.60	14.40

Stock Sales

Stock	Total Proceeds ($)	Shares Sold	Dividend Payer?
The Jean Coutu Group (PJC.A)	5,561.50	227	Yes
Aurora Cannabis Inc. (ACB)	1,009.30	75	No
Canopy Growth Corporation	1,017.55	25	No

I made stock purchases totaling $15,126.85 in invested capital. The gross yield is $157.73 quarterly or $630.92 annually in forward dividend income. When subtracting the capital from the PJC.A sale, we can see that $9,565.35 of the invested capital was net new in terms of dividend paying companies. When again subtracting out the loss of dividend income from the PJC.A shares ($29.51 quarterly or $118.04 annually), in net terms I have increased my forward dividend income by $128.22 quarterly ($157.73 – $29.51) or $512.88 annually ($630.92 – $118.04).

The sale of some of my cannabis stocks which was purely profit really fueled my invested capital. I have been toying with the idea of liquidating my cannabis positions entirely as I feel generally that the sector is generally charged right now with hysteria and not necessarily backed by fundamentals. Inasmuch as I expect the cannabis theme to be impactful to Canada overall, that doesn’t necessarily justify the valuations of many of the companies in the sector. There are many unknowns. For instance, how many people will go to the store to buy high quality cannabis when they can instead just continue buying it from their local dealer? Will the quality of the product entice the average consumer to pay a higher price? Will people begin growing the product at home? Only time will tell how all of this plays out and I am tempted to pull the trigger on my positions and simply further invest in dividend paying equities.

At the end of the day, cannabis is a weed and as such doesn’t take much to grow. If people are given the opportunity to save themselves financially by doing a bit of work on their own at home, I have to question how willing they will be to shell out their money at a store. Of course, making the value proposition worthwhile will be up to the vendors themselves. They will need to differentiate their product which may be difficult depending on what they are allowed to do in terms of marketing.

Stock Considerations

While I really bulked up my positions in the utility and financial sectors, I still feel there is opportunity for me to keep buying. I would like to round out my BNS position to 100 shares and add to both FTS and CU. The yield on all of these companies have been comfortably over 4% which is fantastic when considering they each tend to raise their dividends at a rate of 6% or higher. CU has boosted its dividend by at least 10% over the last two years and it actually has a +5% yield at the moment.

On the U.S. side of the equation, I have been hoping for weakness in Visa Inc. (V) which I initially purchased in November 2017. It has been strong ever since I made that buy and I have felt locked out somewhat on the sidelines. This doesn’t surprise me as I believe it to be one of the strongest companies in the world and riding the wave of a secular shift to paperless transactions. Regardless, I’ll be waiting with cash on hand if and when it experiences a significant pullback.

Conclusion

I would not have predicted at the start of the year that I would wind up hitting nearly $10k in invested capital by the midway point of 2018. I seemed to have caught a bit of a buying fever and decided to get aggressive.

As always, my Five Year Plan is front-and-center in my mind. With each extra dollar I invest, I move closer to achieving financial independence. My snowball of passive income continues to gain momentum.

At this stage in the game I am motivated to see whether I can top $15k and perhaps even $20k by the end of 2018. I have already hit a huge milestone which leaves me feeling optimistic about what is to come.

Thank you for reading.

– Ryan

How has your start to the year gone as an investor?

Full Disclosure: Long CSW.B, BNS, FTS, CU, H, MRU, ACB, WEED, V

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