Moral Investing

Making the headlines this past week was the atrocious scene along our border.  Being an event driven investor, I had to at least take a look at the situation to – at a minimum – determine my exposure and whether strategy adjustments are  necessary.

I’m not a prude by any stretch of the imagination but (outside of ETFs) have never invested in tobacco stocks.  I have minimal exposure to wine and spirits.  While I’m not casting aspersions on those that do, I figure there are more than enough alternatives that better fit my preferences.

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Road Trip Musings

Settling in at home after wandering the country a little, provides an opportunity to reflect on my observations, discussions and tenor of the people I engaged with.  I thoroughly enjoyed the visits and sometimes lively discussions and following are a sampling of these.  There is but one potential action item for my portfolio review – which is less than normal for these adventures.

Thoughts on EV Investing

FI Fighter returned from his self-imposed exile with a renewed passion.  Now I’ll be the first to admit that his investing style is a little (ok, maybe a lot) more on the fringe than mine, but his concepts and theories are well-reasoned.  Perhaps the downside to his methods as the timing – not in the sense of timing the market but in having a measure of foresight in developing trends. Being ahead of the curve tends to have drawbacks as Elon Musk can probably attest.

He returned May 18th with a series of three posts/podcasts, one of which garnered my attention.  His views on metals – in particular Lithium – seem to resonate with me. I agree with his general view of market direction, our disagreement would be in the investment manner.  In short I prefer a greater margin of safety with a ‘proven concept’ where he’s all-in on a ‘plausible theory’.

May 2018 Update

The month was fairly normal until the final week with Italy followed by Trump’s tariff rollout.  In between we saw the on again – off again negotiating style with North Korea and China.  Other than a couple of down days it appears the market is learning to ignore the noise.  Again I used the dips to my advantage and stayed the course.  May saw a rise in the S&P of 2.16% while my portfolio outperformed the index by registering a rise of 2.24%.  YTD I still lag the S&P by 0.35%.

Portfolio Updates:

• Added to CMCSA (making another round lot)
  
• Added to my ETF group (CUT, EWA, EWW, JPMV, VGK)
  
• Added to GE (on the rail spin (WAB) news)
  
• Added SMTA (via SRC spin)
  
• Added to BKSC (via 10% stock dividend)
• Added to DGX on news of UNH strategic partnership

DIVIDENDS

This is where my main focus resides.  Market gyrations are to be expected but my goal is to see a rising flow of dividends on an annual basis.  I’m placing less emphasis on the quarterly numbers as the number of semi-annual, interim/final and annual cycles have been steadily increasing in my portfolio.

• May delivered an increase of 12.97% Y/Y fueled by dividend increases.
• May delivered a 15.98% increase over last quarter (February).
• Dividend increases averaged 12.14% with 55.98% of the portfolio delivering at least one increase (including 1 cut (GE).
  
• 2018 Dividends received were 46.53% of 2017 total dividends putting us on pace to exceed last year in early November.

Notes: the Q/Q shows an increasing trend line due only to timing of dividend payouts (pay date shifts).  Y/Y is only on par with dividend increases as dividends received were used to purchase next quarter (rather than current quarter) dividends.

Spinoffs:

GE‘s rail unit to spin then merge with WEB

Mergers:

XRX merger with Fujifilm cancelled.

SHPG to merge into TKPYY

Summary

Any month with increasing dividends and beating the S&P has to be considered a good one.

Hope all of you had a good month as well.