My Portfolio Review 2019

Welcome back everyone, hope you had great holidays and a happy new year! I wish you all a lot of happines and proud moments in the new year!

2019 is past us and we are now welcoming the new decade with 2020. It has been a really interesting decade, where I went through trully a lot of things. But more about that in a separate article.

Today we are going to take a look at my portfolio performance in 2019. We will see the returns, biggest winners, biggest losers and more.

Before we start I want to let you know that I am no longer counting any cash outside my brokerage account as part of my portfolio. This is because I will need it for various reasons and cannot count anything I am not ready to invest towards my portfolio anymore.

Let’s get into it, starting with how my portfolio looks like coming into the new decade.

Apple (AAPL) – 16.96%

Cisco (CSCO) – 8.86%

Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B) – 8.57%

AbbVie (ABBV) – 7.59%

AT&T (T) – 7.16%

Bank Of America (BAC) – 7.05%

Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VFEM) – 6.73%

Unilever (UN) – 6.53%

Caterpillar (CAT) – 6.34%

Pfizer (PFE) – 5.53%

Qualcomm (QCOM) – 5.44%

Vanguard US Corporate Bond ETF (VUCP) – 4.79%

Cash – 4.26%

Activision Blizzard (ATVI) – 4.20%

My Overall Performance

I want to measure this in three different ways. For those of you that have been following me for a while might know that I went through a couple of periods before I started building that particular portfolio.

I finished 2018 with something like 100% cash before taking a step back and start building this portfolio. So I started this one in around the end of February and have been building it up ever since. I have only bought new stocks without selling a single one.

So we will measure it in three ways. First overall performance since 2018, then for the past year and then since I started building my current portfolio.

Since 2018 Overall Performance

My performance since 2018 +36%

S&P500 performance since 2018 +23%

As you can see I have been ahead of the market since I started investing, but there are definetely things I regret and things I don’t. I had a decent portfolio back in 2018, but I thought it is the right time to start from scratch and start building my portfolio with a long-term goal in mind.

Now every position I get in is one that I want to hold esentially forever, so I am overall happy. Also some of you might know that I do not expect to outperform the markets over the long-run and that is okay with me. For now I have been ahead, but I expect this to even-out over a longer period of time.

2019 Performance

My performance for 2019 +16%

S&P500 performance 2019 +29%

This looks like quite a big underperformance and it is, but I am happy with my returns. First I started in the end of February, while the market bottomed right around the beginning of last year. But I am building my portfolio for the long-term, so yearly performance do not bother me much. Let’s get into the next one – since I started investing.

Now let’s get into my current portfolio.

Performance Since Inception

My portfolio since Inception (end of February) +16%

S&P500 since the end of February +16%

As you can see I have been in-line with the markets during this period and this is quite an expected result for me. If we count dividends I am probably slightly ahead, but that doesn’t really matter.

What matters to me is that I am very happy with every single one of my positions and their steadily increasing dividends. Right now I have 13 positions with almost 50 dividends spread across the year, or around 4 dividends every month on average.

My goal is to increase my positions to around 20 and of course continue to increase my dividend income month by month.

My Best Positions

Apple (AAPL) +64%

AbbVie (ABBV) +37%

AT&T (T) +30%

Apple has been one of my first and my biggest position in the portfolio. I am a firm believer in the company in the long-term and I see it as a great dividend contributor going forward.

What is interesting though is that I bought AbbVie and AT&T because of their great dividends and didn’t expect a lot in terms of price appreciation. It turned our that both of them have returned more than 30% this year, not even counting their dividends.

My Worst Positions

Pfizer (PFE) -6.17%

Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B) -5.47%

Unilever (UN) +0.03%

As you can see my ”worst positions” are barely down, so there is nothing that worries me in any 3 of those companies. In fact I have been buying more Shell, and my next add-on would probably be Unilever after their drop in the last earnings.

As far as Pfizer stays I am currently in a bit of a standstill with the company. A great company, but there is going to be a spinoff there soon and I want to see what the new company is going to look like. I am currently not selling any of my position, but I am also not going to buy more right now.

My Plans For 2020

Increase My Positions

As you can see currently I have 13 stocks in my portfolio and my plan is to increase them to 20 in 2020. One reason is for a bit more diversification, another one is that there are some stocks that I really want to have in my portfolio. And a third reason is that I just love having more dividends coming in every month.

There are a lot of stocks on my Watchlist and I am just waiting for a good price, so I can get in with a good yield. I am not very concerned about missing out, as I said I am building my portfolio for the long-term and patience is my biggest ally.

There is a new earnings season coming in and I am pretty sure there are going to be some good deals around. In fact I have bought almost every stock I own after an earnings miss.

Increase My Dividend Income

As some of you know investing is all about dividends for me. You can notice that each of my positions pays dividends and I cannot be happier about that. That’s why my goal for the coming year is to keep increasing my positions and add new ones to increase my dividends.

I am also reinvesting all the dividends and it feels really cool to see your dividends income increasing month after month.

Now if you are reading this please don’t think that dividend investing is the only way you can go. There are tons of different Strategies you can use. Just dividend investing is the one that fits my goals the most, but your situation can be different, so please make sure you pick the right strategy personally for you.

Stay the Course

As I said I started my portfolio with a very long-term mindset. So far I have not sold a single stock and have only been adding and reinvesting. What changed this year is that I am solely focused on dividends and buying great companies at good prices. That is why I am very happy about my portfolio and the price appreciation does not really matter for me.

I put my performance here for accountability reasons mostly. In fact I have said it before, but I will say it again that I do not expect to beat the market over the long-term. What I expect is to one day receive enough dividends in order to achieve my goal, which is Financial Freedom .

Conclusion

This is going to be all from me as far as portfolio breakdown goes. I am currently building a good way to measure my dividend income, so I hope I can start sharing that with you soon.

I hope you found that interesting and I hope 2020 can be a good year for all of us and that this coming decade is going to bring us a lot of success and happy moments.

Full Disclosure : I am/ we are long AAPL, UN, T, BAC, PFE, ABBV, CAT, RDS.B, VFEM, VUCP, CSCO, QCOM, ATVI

Additional Disclosure : This article is meant to identify an idea for further research and analysis and should not be taken as a recommendation to invest. It does not provide individualized advice or recommendations for any specific reader. Also note that I may not cover all relevant risks related to the ideas presented in the article.

Readers should conduct their own due dilligence and carefully consider their own invesing objectives, risk tolerance, time horizon, tax situation, liquidity needs and concentration levels. I am not a financial advisor and this article is for educational and personal accountability reasons only.