Recent Buy --- BMY

Today I decided to initiate a position in BMY.

• BMY:  35 shares @ $49.96 --- Yield  3.04%

Total capital invested is $1755.48 and this purchase will increase my yearly dividends by $53.20.

While the markets keep marching up towards the sky, BMY is actually down about 35% from $77 in June to the high 40s during the last 3 months. I told myself if the price hit $50 I would jump into a small position.

This company may require some patience as it has fallen hard through all kinds of resistance levels. I am planning on being a long term investor and will gladly add more if the price falls further. I actually feel really good about several of my recent investments. It's not often that your portfolio value surges up while companies you are underweight in drop in value. That is an awesome combination!!

I was close to adding T or NEA (muni bond fund) also. I will continue to watch these two along with other utilities/telcos as well as tobacco stocks like PM and MO.

Forward dividends are $4300.00

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

Recent Buys --- SO & MO

Today I added so high yielders to my portfolio.

• SO:  40 shares @ $49.53 --- Yield  4.52%
• MO:  35 shares @ $61.24 --- Yield  3.98%

Total capital invested is $4138.50 and the combined yield is 4.15%. These purchases will increase my yearly dividends by $171.80.

I already own 50 shares of SO and I thought the recent pullback would be a nice time to add a few more shares.

While I didn't have MO in my portfolio this year, I have owned shares in the past. It's hard to say if the shares are cheap, but I do know that this company rarely gives excellent buying opportunities. In fact, both the price and dividends appear to go straight up over time. If the yield gets close to 5%, I could see myself adding 200 shares immediately.

I was also closely watching T, VZ, and GIS. I would love to add shares all of these companies to my portfolio. On the lower yielding side of the pond, NKE and GILD are looking interesting.

Forward dividends are around $4250.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

September 2016 Recap

The dividends photo is a tight squeeze so I'll manually type the summary below as well.

Here is the summary of the dividends I received in my taxable account.

• PFE --- $90.78
• XOM --- $77.30
• BP --- $67.18
• RDS-b --- $65.80
• GM --- $61.29
• WFC --- $51.30
• MSFT --- $29.52
• SO --- $28.00
• TGT --- $24.00
• TROW --- $12.42
• GILD --- $11.75
• GS --- $7.80
• NEA --- $6.88
• ESV --- $1.70

Total dividends received for September are $535.72.

September was a fantastic month for dividends and the investments from earlier months are starting to pay off....literally.  As always, I reinvested all the dividends back into the companies paying them.

As you can see I also added $18,419.83 in fresh new capital which increased my forward dividends by$584.88. 

The fourth quarter of this year should be really solid and I can't wait to continue adding more shares of great companies.

Forward dividends are around $4050.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

XOM covered call closed

Yesterday afternoon I decided to close out my covered XOM call. The details can be seen above.

Originally I sold a $90 XOM call and received a $237.30 premium. Since Exxon was trading around $82 yesterday and I had essentially earned 72% of the premium after subtracting all fees, I decided to buy back the call for $67.70.

This left me with a net profit of $169.60.  Not too bad especially when combined with the $336 ESV call profit also shown in the picture above.

XOM has traded as high as $96 this year which put me "upside down" on this trade most of the year. For a while I was concerned that I might have to sell the shares at $90.00, but the shares came back down and I decided to take the option profit and remove the possibility of losing the shares.

I was extremely fortunate with my timing as XOM is trading up about $3.50 today at a price of about $86.50. Most likely all of the option profit would have vanished with today's price action.

I am tempted to resell another call and start the process all over again.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

Recent Buy ---- More KO

Today I added shares to my KO position.

• KO:  40 shares @ $42.02 --- Yield  3.33%

Total capital invested is $1687.75 and this purchase will add $56.00 to my yearly dividends.

My KO share count is now 160 spinning off $224 of dividends for me. I will probably add to other companies going forward since this is becoming one of my larger positions.

TGT is also looking pretty attractive here around $67 and I'm still thinking about initiating a position in MO as well. JNJ, MCD, and PG are also noticeably absent from my portfolio. They will start showing up eventually.

Forward dividends are now around $4050.00.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

9 Day ESV Call Option Trade

I decided to buy 15 $7.00 ESV Oct 21 2016 Calls a couple of weeks ago and closed the position last week.

Basically I bought 5 $7.00 Calls at $.55 and then an additional 10 Calls at $.50 for a total of 15 Calls at a total investment of $800.15. I held the calls for a little over a week and then dumped them at $.75 for a net proceed of $1136.80.

For this 9 days worth of work I picked up a net $336.65 in profit. This is my first option transaction since I excercised a $32 call option to purchase 100 shares of M back in July.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

Recent Buy --- More TROW

Today I had my $65.99 limit order filled.

• TROW:  28 shares @ $65.99 --- Yield  3.27%

Total capital invested is $1854.67 and will add $60.48 to my yearly dividends. This increases my share count to 73. One more purchase should bring me up to 100 shares.

I am also watching MO very closely and would love to add shares. I last purchased MO in 2013 for about $30 and it is now more than double that amount. Thanks to some outstanding dividend raises, the yield is still close to 4%. What a machine!

Forward dividends still holding around $4k after the VIAB dividend cut.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY