2020 February Dividend Income + Warren Buffett's annual letter

Two months in to the new year and the markets are experiencing some significant volatility, down over 20% from their recent highs.  It is during these volatile times, that investors seemingly appreciate their dividend income even more - as it provides an opportunity to reinvest the income into equities that appear attractively valued for the long term.  The question for many investors in the coming weeks and months is what if any companies in their portfolios will need to cut their dividends and which companies will be able to weather the storm and be able to increase the dividend in the next 12 mos?  It will be interesting to see how things develop in the next 12 months to say the least.

Recent Buy - DOW Inc (DOW), Delta (DAL), and 3M Co (MMM)

It feels like it has been forever since I made my last purchase and cash has been piling up in the meantime.  When it comes to investing, we all know that patience is most certainly a virtue one needs to exhibit on a regular basis, whether it comes to waiting for reasonable valuation to present itself or simply buying and holding a basket of investments in an attempt to delay the gratification of what a sum of dollars can buy today and instead investing that sum of money in a security and then waiting for it to exponentially grow into a greater sum of dollars over a decade or two in sum cases much longer.  Well, with the ongoing global coronavirus scare and the number of confirmed cases growing on a daily basis, Mr. Market has begun to panic and as a result has agreed to sell me some shares at much more reasonable valuations than what he was willing to do just a few months ago.  In response to Mr. Market's panic, I've put $7,500 in capital to work in the past month with the average yield of 4.0% for an additional $297 in annual dividend income. See below for the details on the latest transactions in recent weeks.

2020 January Dividend Summary

Although January 2020 ended with a volatile week of trading largely attributed to the coronavirus, no on would be able to tell based the monthly dividend receipts the PIV portfolio collected.  Take a look below for an account of the dividend transactions.

2019 December Dividend Summary

Well folks, that's a wrap for 2019.  According to Forbes, the last trading session for 2019 "...capped off a strong year for the stock market: In 2019, the S&P 500 rose by 29%, the Nasdaq by 35% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 22%. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq posted their biggest one-year gains since 2013, while the Dow’s performance was its best since 2017." Quite a year indeed and few would complain about their portfolio's climb in valuation if they were anywhere near or above the 29% return for the S&P index, especially in light of the average annual return for the S&P since 1957 which is roughly 8%.  Without further ado, let's take a look at the dividend income for this past month as well as where the portfolio stands in terms YoY and YTD dividend trends, portfolio diversification and total value.