My Portfolio Review October 2019

Welcome back everyone for another portfolio review, this time for the month of October 2019. Let’s get into it :

Apple (AAPL) – 9.50%

AT&T (T) – 5.04%

Unilever (UN) – 5.00%

Cisco Systems (CSCO) – 4.90%

Abbvie (ABBV) – 4.60%

Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B) – 4.18%

Bank of America (BAC) – 4.09%

Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VFEM) – 3.75%

Caterpillar (CAT) -3.75%

Pfizer (PFE) – 3.74%

Vanguard US Corporate Bond ETF (VUCP) – 3.30%

Cash and Cash Equivalents – 48.67%

New Positions

Hate to say it, but there have been no new positions this month. It’s been a very busy month for me, working or studying literally 7 days a week.

I have been checking the stock market and all of the more major news, but haven’t seen anything to pick up my interest.

I have been following a couple of stocks more closely, but nothing was interesting enough for me to consider starting a new position.

Plans For The Month

• Increase my Dividend Income

As you can see my biggest position is still in my savings account. Of course I would like to change that, but also don’t want to rush into stocks or ETFS that I am not certain I want to hold.

I am not in a rush, but having more money in dividend stocks and more dividend income is of course my goal. I am researching a lot of stocks every month and managed to lower my cash position to around 48%. There are a couple of stocks and ETFs that I am following closely and will open a position when the Metrics look good enough to me.

• Follow The Earnings Season

Most of the S&P500 companies are reporting earnings within this month, so there are going to be a lot of interesting news coming up. If you have been following my reviews you probably know that I love earnings season for one main reason – people tend to panic after a small miss in given company projection.

In fact I have opened most of my positions following underwhelming earnings reports. For example I am now up around 30% in my AT&T position only a couple of months in, not even counting the 7% yield that I am getting every quarter.

Of course stock prices go up and down and I don’t care that much about price appreciation. But getting a good starting yield is a big bonus for me.

With so many companies reporting it is almost inevitable that one on my Watchlist is going to report seemingly bad numbers. Every company in the world goes through misses here and there and I am a big fan of using it to my advantage.

• Get Some High-Growth Stocks

You may have noticed that most of my stocks are quite boring so to say. I don’t expect many of them to grow at a rapid pace in the future and I am okay with that. After all my goal is dividend income and all of my picks provide that.

But I would like to get some lower yield, higher growth stocks in my portfolio to balance it out.

A bit of a problem is that a lot of the stocks that I like in that category are on the expensive side. But I am not in a hurry and have no problem waiting for a while until some of them get into a buying range. It may take some time, but I am following closely and have no problem waiting until the price is right for me.

Conclusion

It has not been the most interesting month without new positions, but my dividends keep coming in and steadily increasing, which is perfectly fine for me. Hope you had an interesting read and wish you all the success. Don’t forget to subscribe if you want to stay updated on new articles and portfolio reviews.

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

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.