Whole Lotta Purchases: Dividend Stock Update August 2015

I’ve been pretty busy with the purchases this week. I have sent roughly two grand to companies this week in order to become a new shareholder or to increase my positions. Oil of course, went further down making it even more attractive for me to build my long-term stakes in these companies. My Royal Dutch Shell position is almost begging me to add further to it and looking at the dividend yield, it really is tempting however, I think that over the next year or so the oil majors still have more to fall and if I could catch RDS-B in the low $40s or even in the 30s, I would snap it up. I did send some more into my ExxonMobil DRIP account and snagged it at a good price, which helped to bring my cost basis somewhat. I felt that as I added more money into the market, that I needed to diversify into other sectors and as such I initiated a position in Unilever and Diageo this week.

This week’s purchases:

XOM: $210 for 2.971519 shares @$70.67

UNP: $50 for .604092 shares @$82.77

AAPL: $110 for 1.0116 shares @108.74

BRK-B: $200 for 1.5039 shares @$132.99

UL: $100 for 2.4540 shares @$40.75

DEO: $952.40 for 9 shares @$105.82

VTSMX: $28.82 for 0.59 shares @$48.87

Total Invested: $1651.22

Added to Yearly Dividends: $54.49

In addition to these purchases, I have also signed up with Procter and Gamble’s direct stock purchase plan on Computershare. My initial investment will be of $350 (before any fees) and I am currently waiting on the process to complete so that I can receive my initial shares. I also think that I’ve reached the $200 level of dividend income from my portfolio in the next year, which is pretty cool. I remember when my only position was in Coca-Cola and it was so tiny that I received less than $4 in dividends for that year and now I can sit back and collect 50x as much…it’s not a lot yet but it will definitely get to crazy passive income levels in the future.

It is interesting to me how quickly my portfolio has grown over the past few months. I’ve kind of had this idea in my head that I should build a portfolio of about 30 stocks with $1000 invested in each of them and then build it from there. The problem being that, most of my target stocks are not trading at much of a discount and indeed some are not even close to what I would want them at (I’m looking at your Clorox and Brown-Forman). I suppose those investment prices wouldn’t matter as much with my planned multi-decade holding period (actually, I don’t plan to ever sell) but I think that I would still prefer to be in cash and be able to pick up good values whenever the market pulls back or outright crashes. I’m really in no rush to fill out the rest of this portfolio.

I was very excited to get Diageo at the price that I did. Man, this company is an awesome collection of brands and scale. It only owns the following alcoholic beverage brands: Captain Morgan, Guiness, Tanqueray, Smirnoff, Bailey’s, Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal, J&B, Ketel One, Ciroc, along with many more regional favorites from around the world. It’s just crazy how pretty much anytime I step foot into a bar, club, restaurant, party, or whatever that someone is probably enjoying one of their brands and stuffing money into my pockets.

Yes, I got me some Diageo but LVMH, Brown-Forman, and possibly Pernod are still on my radar. LVMH is definitely a business that I would want to own at the right price, it’s luxury brands are unparalleled and cross different industries. Alas, I’ll have to wait on that one.