Oil Stock Dividends and Railroads

My usual monthly DSPP of XOM went through for June and added further to my position at a good price and lowering my cost per share. Also, after signing up for Union Pacific’s direct stock purchase plan about a month ago, this stock finally showed up in my Computershare account, with the opening $50 purchase. Since yesterday,  UNP pulled back below $97 per share, I sent another $100 its way to hopefully catch the downside in the high nineties (or even below $95). I don’t know when the railroads will find their bottom in this market, UNP is down from $123 per share just 4 months ago, but I’ll gladly start purchasing under $100 to add to my long-term holdings.

I also received two dividends from my oil stocks, one from BP and one from RDS-B in my brokerage account. The problem is, that I overlooked the fact that Royal Dutch Shell reinvests your dividends into A class shares because of their scrip program, meaning that, I now own a small fractional share of RDS-A instead of the B shares or just simply taking the dividend as cash. Yep, it looks stupid and is pretty dumb to see two separate classes of shares in that account, especially with a dividend so minor being reinvested into a new set of shares. I turned off the reinvestment option for both sets of B shares in my brokerage account and in my Roth IRA. Maybe that is the correct solution, is to just let it be but I am reading up on the tax implications or if it would even be worth trading the B shares in my brokerage account for A shares. Either way, it irritates me that I made a mistake and that Shell’s corporate structure is so damn complicated from an investor’s perspective.

Here is some of the past week’s recent activity:

Stock Purchases:

XOM: $52 for .617241 shares @$84.2459

UNP: $50 for .496059 shares @$100.7944

Adds $2.89 to my yearly dividends

Dividends Received (reinvested):

BP: $4.26 for .0999 shares

RDS-B: $3.15 for .0505 shares of RDS-A

VTSMX: $2.11 for .04 shares