September 2015: Dividend Update!

    September is one of my quieter dividend months, but just like every other month the dividends come in nice and steady with no effort or early mornings on my part! Every third month of a quarter is my lightest month, with the monthly distributions forming the base of the income, with a helping hand from Suncor. I am also very excited that for the first time this year, the on average lowest paying month just exceeded the highest single month of dividend income that I received in October 2014, just short of a full year ago!

Next Buy Watchlist: June 2015

    Monday's news items made for an interesting day to put up a watchlist. With the current market fallout of Greece's potential missing of its IMF repayment date and the looming possibility of its unprecedented retreat from the European Union stock markets have taken a hit. I have been closing in on the stocks that I want to get, but with these events I am glad to have been taking my time. I am also going to be waiting on the result of tomorrow Bank of Canada report on the Canadian economy, as that could also affect financial companies. Now, while preparing and researching for my next addition to my portfolio I have had a few objectives in mind.

Next Buy Watchlist: May 2015

   Once again I have some capital to deploy, and have been refining which areas of my portfolio to add to. As well as having to consider the encroaching maximization of my Tax Free Savings Account. Which means I am having to start planning how I manage which investments will reside inside it, and which investments will be more tax efficient outside of it.

   For that reason, as you might have noticed I have been leaning pretty heavily in the direction of higher yield, monthly payers, in particular REITs. Since a larger portion of their total return is derived from their monthly distributions rather than potential capital gains when selling a stock. And with my general inclination to buy and hold the stocks that I buy for the long term, when I do eventually setup a non-registered account it should be more tax-efficient for me to have lower yielding, consistent dividend payers outside of my TFSA since in Ontario there is a pretty good tax break on dividend income from Canadian companies. So most likely in the long term (2+, 5+ years?) I would be transitioning my bank stocks like TD, RY and BNS to there while filling up my current account with REITs. Hoping to make a post in the future on REITs and tax efficiency

Dream Office REIT (D.UN)

    Dream focuses on owning and managing quality office buildings in downtown and suburban business districts. This was my first REIT holding and I have added to it fairly recently and am planning to do so again in the future, perhaps even this time around. Dream continues to have above average occupancy rates of its offices and boosts stable tenants in its core holdings of Toronto and Calgary, despite the recent decline in oil prices. Which is a key factor in keeping its funds from operations stable and growing, which allows the REIT to pay its generous monthly distribution of  8.4%.

RioCan REIT (REI.UN)

    RioCan is my other REIT holding and it fills the roll of focusing on owning, developing and operating small and large shopping centers. Generally, their centers are 'anchored' with a large, recognizable long-term tenant such as a bank branch, grocery store or mall outlet.I get a bit of a smile every time I go by a lot with the "Operated by RioCan" at the bottom. Knowing in part, that the property is giving me a little bit of its income every month. RioCan has a more modest distribution yield of 4.94%, but has a solid history of increasing its dividend when compared to Dream.

Suncor (SU)

    This massive Canadian integrated oil company has so far been a bit of a sore spot on my portfolio from when I initiated my position back in September 2014, as it has fallen nearly 16% since then as oil prices have declined. I continue to hold on to the position and continue monitoring it for good opportunities to buy in to. Over the past few months I have seen it oscillate from a general low in the $35 range, and in the upper range of $39 fairly consistently and I see the $36-37$ as a good valuation to get back into it. Overall, Suncor remains a massive company which has been pushing itself to continue looking for efficiencies and other cost cutting measures to keep its cost per barrel down. So far the dividend remains quite safe as Suncor has a very solid balance sheet still. And even at today's price of $36.21 the dividend yield is 3.04%. The main foreseeable issue with them is that if oil remains low for a sustained period of time, than they may not be able to, or unwilling to let go of more capital to continue raising the dividend as they have so consistently in the past.


    These three are the main holdings which I am leaning towards. Dream and RioCan represent my inclination towards income generating assets, whereas Suncor offers a history of long term dividend growth and the potential for a substantial gain in its share price if/when oil prices rise and stabilize. And since Suncor will most likely have its position 'moved' into a non-registered taxable account where I will collect dividends from in a tax efficient manner I may be able to see a considerable tax-free gain from it in the future.

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).

December 2014 Dividend Update!

    It has been an interesting month for my portfolio as 2014 comes to a close. I am quite thankful for (most likely) ending the year positive and extremely happy to have now received from last dividend of the year from Suncor which has helped to push this months total dividend to $37.76, which is $8.70 more than the last comparable month! This months dividends were primarily from just my monthly payers, with Suncor chipping in $5.6 as the only quarterly payer.

Next Buy Watch(wish)list: December 2014

    So we are now mid way through December and the markets have been swinging all over the place. And since I wont have any extra cash to invest in a stock purchase this month, instead I am posting my current group of stocks on my watchlist, but its Christmas time and so its a bit more of a 'wish'-list. So in the spirit of a wishlist, I will be including some of the stocks I would have bought when they dropped down over the last week or so, or would still love to buy at their current valuations and not necessarily in line with my current portfolio sector weighting either. If only, if only!

Next Buy Watchlist: Nov. 2014

    This month I may have some extra capital to add alongside of my dividends for a smaller purchase. Depending on just how much cash I have to spare, I may end up only adding a bit to my exchange traded fund ZDV; which is still trading a fair bit below my current cost basis. Other than I am looking to adding to my current positions of my 'core' companies in the portfolio; particularly positions which haven't bounced back as much from the pullback in October and/or represent smaller holdings within the portfolio. Most likely the purchase would be of BNS, RY or NA.

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!

Recent Buy! September 2014

    Today I was able to add another solid Canadian dividend paying company to my portfolio. I pulled the trigger and bought 20 shares of Suncor (SU) for $43.10. This adds $22.40 to my yearly dividend income, at a yield of %2.6 and represents 7% of my portfolio. As I explained in my recent watchlist post, Suncor is Canada's largest energy company with a market capitalization of over 63 billion!

    I feel pretty good about this buy, since I was working today and not much access to my brokerage

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