Outlook for July 2018

The dog days of summer are here. Here in Ottawa Canada, we’ve been setting records of sweltering heat…on Canada Day (July 1st), we hit 47°C with humidex!! More importantly, the hot stock market in the US continues its streak with no letdown in sight. While Tech grabs all the headlines, its the Consumer Discretionary that topped the returns for the first half of 2018.

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Finding Low Risk Dividend Stocks

A stock with a high yield doesn't mean much if the dividend is cut or eliminated, and the stock price declines significantly. Sometimes it is desirable to accept higher risk for a higher yield. Other times we may be accepting higher risk and are not being adequately compensated for the additional risk. What can we do to help gauge the risk of an individual stock?

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Weekend Reading Links - July 15, 2018

For your weekend reading pleasure, the articles listed below contain some of the best dividend and value investing insights found on the web. They were written by various members of the Dividend Investing and Value Network over the past week:

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One Raise At a Time - Four Decades In The Making

Something I love about dividend growth investing is that each month I get to hear about companies I own deciding to pay me more money in dividends.  Just for owning a small portion of said companies.  Not going and doing R&D for new products or technology.  Not selling any products.  Not managing any employees or inventory.  Not making sales calls.  All I had to do was have the foresight to invest some of my savings in excellent companies.  That's dividend growth investing at work!  I mean who doesn't like getting a raise for doing nothing?  Dividend growth investing is far from a get rich quick investment strategy, rather you need to remain focused on the long term goal to be successful.

On Thursday the Board of Directors at Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) gave shareholders a pay raise.  The dividend was increased from $0.40 up to $0.44 per share per quarter.  That's a solid 10.0% increase.  Walgreens has grown their payout to shareholders for 42 consecutive years which gives them the title of Dividend Champion.  Shares currently yield 2.95% based on the new annualized payout.

The new dividend will be paid out on September 12, 2018 to shareholders of record as of August 20th.  

Since I own 46.069 shares of Walgreens in my FI Portfolio this raise increased my forward 12-month dividends by $7.37.  This is the 6th dividend increase I've received from Walgreens since initiating a position in late 2012.  Over that time the dividend payout has increased by a total of 60%.  According to US Inflation Calculator, the total inflation over that same period has come in at just 9.6%

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