Recent(ish) Buy: Algonquin Power & Utilities

    In November I  made a small stock purchase, adding to an existing position in my portfolio. Using a market limit order, I bought 56 shares of Algonquin Power & Utilities (AQN) at the price of $10.94 per share. I continue to hold, buy and build up my position in this company as it has proven to continue to grow its operations, revenue and dividend over the past few years.

Recent Buy! April 2016

    Following up on my Watchlist post, I went ahead and added to my position in Algonquin Power and Utilities (AQN). I have held shares in this company since first starting my portfolio, by year end it will be 3 years! I still consider this stock as a long-term hold, and is the largest single holding in my portfolio, with a weighting of 14.87%. Which is from adding more shares and the stocks steady appreciation in value over time.

Next Buy Watchlist: April 2016

    While I have been rather busy lately with some recent buys, mainly building up and cost averaging down my position in Manulife Financial, not once, but twice! Adding to Pembina Pipeline as well, as my most recent buy in TD Bank. I have been buying stocks and building up my portfolio while neglecting to post about those stocks which are on my radar. Sometimes it is due to seeing an opportunity crop up and I go for it, or being just a bit too busy to post, or not having any particular stock in mind.

    This time around since my last buy of TD I have a definite purpose for my next buy. My holdings in the Financial sector, and oil related companies has become more heavily concentrated than I would like. In part due to buying more of those stocks as they sank in value, and have now rebounded a bit resulting in their further weighting in my portfolio.

Portfolio Update: April 6th

    I have been making quite a few purchases of late and realized that its been quite some time since I last posted a portfolio update post, the last one being at the end of January, woops! So here is the status of my portfolio as of April 6th. 

Recent Buy! March(2) 2015

    Whooo! Just got back from vacation in the last couple days, so if I'v been a bit quiet on this Blog, Twitter and reading/commenting on other blogs which you can find on my Blogroll Page. So, to kicking off coming back I deployed some more cash with another buy this month! As with my previous one, it is also from my last Watchlist.

Next Buy Watchlist: February 2015

    I should be having money to invest within the upcoming weeks, so it is time to compile my watchlist of stocks that I am interested in! There are quite a few on my radar at the moment which I will be tracking and keep a closer eye on. For the most part I am mainly interested to adding to, and building up my current positions with an overarching goal of getting them to have payouts big enough to start a Dividend Re-Investment Plan. There are also some companies which I might start a new position in as well. And definitely some of these are familiar names from previous Watchlists.

    The main sectors/components of my portfolio that I want to build up are Financials, Telecoms, REITs and Consumer products, as well as selective Energy companies. I do eventually want to build up positions in Resources/Industrials, Healthcare, Technology and Transportation, but those areas I think I will leave for outside of my TFSA. I am also hesitant to enter into those areas as I do not currently have a lot of knowledge of them and their product/company life cycles.

Next Buy Watchlist: January 2015

   I am pretty happy to be able to post a Next Buy Watchlist this January! In December I wasn't sure if I would have enough extra capital to make a new stock purchase for this month, primarily due to a lot of expenses incurred in December. But, after reviewing my current cash levels, projected income and expenses for this month and February I'v found that I do indeed have some extra cash to deploy this month! And with all of the recent trouble within the Oil and Financial sectors to name a couple, there are quite a few great companies whose stocks prices have become quite tempting for me. On my shortlist of names are: Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS), Royal Bank of Canada (RY), Toronto Dominion Bank (TD), Pembina Pipeline (PPL), Veresen (VSN), Suncor (SU), and Dream Office REIT (D.UN).

Portfolio Update: November 3rd 2014

    October has gone by and so here is another quick update on how my portfolio is looking, particularly after the pullback we all went through. Since my last portfolio update post I bought 81 new shares of AQN @$8.59 and with the market recovery I'v done very well with them and had my many of my other stocks gain back some of what they had lost; although my Suncor purchase is still dragging on me.

    At the end of last month my portfolio had a value of $10,949 and open profit/loss of $323.94. Since then I had added $650 to the portfolio for my AQN purchase, which means the real value of my portfolio has grown by $200, or 7.79%! My portfolios current yearly estimated dividend payout total of $576.54!

October 2014: Income and Expenses

    After another month of working hard and keeping close track of my spending, it's time to post another income and expenses update! Altogether its been a fairly good month on both fronts with expenses lower than last months, although perhaps not as low as I would have liked considering my extra one-time purchases from last month. On a whole income was a lot higher due to there being three pay periods from my job, compared to the usual two. Dividends this month were also the highest I have had yet as well which is amazing!

October 2014 Dividend Update!

    October went by scarily fast, and with a few market scares to boot! And not to mention Halloween frights as well, like snow fall around midnight!!! The good news is that the dividends kept on coming in on schedule and as expected, if not better! My monthly payers keep my baseline income nice and high at around $30 every month, and this time my quarterly paying companies kicked in even more! I'v also benefited this month from having bought more shares of TD which paid out this month and dividend increases from AQN and BNS. My total dividend income this month is my highest yet, with $63.54 in dividend income! That's over double last months $29.59, and $6.28 more than the previous comparable month! That money is pretty much 6 hours of minimum wage work I did not have to do at all and it feels pretty good to see my passive income stream slowly growing.

Here's my full breakdown:

Recent Buy! October 2014

    In the past few weeks the markets been dropping quite a bit, with an overall drop of 11.4% of the S&P/TSX Composite, which certainly hurt a lot of peoples portfolio values but also brought about many tempting opportunities.This week I decided to go with adding to my position in Alqonquin Power and Utilities (AQN). I'v been watching it from the sidelines in a portfolio simulator for about 3 years now and bought my first position in them in December when I first started my portfolio. Since then its gone up 22%, for the past month or so its been trading quite a bit lower than where its price had stabilized at around $9, so I decided to add to the position with 81 new shares at $8.59.

Next Buy Watchlist: Oct. 2014

    Markets have been heading downwards recently, but that also means there are some better deals to be had. And so with some extra cash sitting around I'v decided to move about into my brokerage account and see what pops up within the next week or so. Normally when I move money into my brokerage account I have a clear purpose as to what I am buying already, down to sending pretty much exactly the amount I need for the targeted number of shares within $10 to account for small market fluctuations in the stocks price. This time however, with the markets being so volatile I'v decided to move an amount that can buy a nice amount of a group of particular stocks, but I don't have a single accusation in mind.

    Generally speaking though due to my current heavy weighting in Energy I am looking to avoid it, except perhaps more of Algonquin Power and Utilities as it has no stake in the Oil market which has recent seen its prices declining.

Next Buy Watchlist: Sept. 2014

    So in August I wasn't able to make any new investments, but this month I will be making an investment and so I have a few companies I am keeping my eye on. Last time I bought more shares of Toronto Dominion Bank (TD), which I am quite happy about since its gone from $55.50 to $57.48 today. Although that does mean it will be more expensive to buy more shares of it in the future.

    For the moment I want to further diversify my holdings and not add to any current positions so my watchlist will not have any of my current holdings; although if a very good opportunity occurs then I might add to a current position. The main one I would be looking to add to is AQN with the aim of having enough shares to DRIP two shares a quarter, as I really like this renewable energy company.

    So my current watchlist includes: Suncor, Manulife, Roger's and REITs

Recent Dividend Increases!

 
Dividend Increases! These two little words are exactly what I like to see from companies whose shares I own. They generally mean business is going very well and so the companies are willing and able to give back a bit more of their profits to investors! This month has been quite good for my portfolio, with three these three companies declaring dividend increases: Algonquin Power & Utilities (AQN), the Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) and the Royal Bank of Canada (RY). It's just so nice to be getting paid more, even if it is just a few cents more for simply holding onto a quality company and looking forward to higher dividend payouts and hopefully more dividend increases in the future.

Here is a breakdown of the dividend increases and how they are affecting my portfolio.
  
Algonquin Power & Utilities (AQN):
CDN$.085 to US$.0875 or ~CDN$.0955, an increase of 12.4%, dividend yield of 4.22%

July 2014 Dividend Update!

    So the month of July has pretty much just finished and so I've received another months worth of awesome dividends and distributions from the companies I hold. Hopefully you've all received some good ones as well! This month has been my best month thus far with a grand total of $57.26 in passive income! That's roughly 5 hours of minimum wage work that I didn't have to do this month! :)

Dividend Income: January - May Catch-up Post!

    So since I'v only recently started this blog and also having only really gotten my portfolio going since January I shall do one 'big' month by month catch-up post on my dividend income thus far. Going forward I'll do a monthly posting. I know its one of the aspects of my portfolio that I look forward to during and at the end of the month to see how much money iv made not working! On other blogs as well I always love seeing how people's portfolios have grown in income from the previous year.

January
Dream Office REIT (D.UN)     $4.11
Algonquin Power (AQN)          $7.57
BCE Inc (BCE)                         $4.66
Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS)     $3.72
Scotia Mutual Fund                  $1.17                * Sold off in Febuary.

Total:                                        $21.23