Dividends, trades, and catching up

Oh my!  It is April already - not sure if I should smile or frown.  March 2016 was a bit of a whirlwind foggy month for me.  I didn't manage to buy any stocks although I had wanted to.  So that will definitely happen this month.

I have updated all my pages so the balances are as of Friday April 1st.  Although I am taking a long-term view (i.e. knowing the market goes up and down), it is fun to see how I've done.  Since the end of January 2016, I have made about $1,900 (pre-tax).  So the value of my investments has gone up about $3,800ish and then I've backed out the cash investments I made.  Of course I don't intend to sell right now so it's a moot point.

Lots of dividends came rolling in the last couple weeks of March.  Well not lots but something.  Everything was reinvested.  The biggest dividend came from my REIT mutual fund ($215) which almost doesn't feel fair to count (but I'm going to!).  Most of the funds in my mutual funds are from pre-blog days but for calculation purposes I will still include them since it just makes it easier on me and my record keeping.  

In addition to the REIT dividend, I also received $1.91 (VYM), $0.34 (VYMI), and $0.70 (PEP) - all were reinvested.  There was also a cash dividend of $1.73 from my money market settlement fund.  The money market settlement fund dividend is particularly large because I had transferred some non-blog related funds into it.  I don't expect to have a dividend this big coming from the settlement fund ever again!

Back to April!  I have schedule a trade for tomorrow as I realized that I completely forgot to purchase more of my Energy mutual fund in March and I believe February as well.  I want to slowly increase that balance.  I will post the details next week (or weekend).

The remaining monies in the settlement fund will either go towards purchasing 10 more shares of Unilever (UL), shares of a new stock, or purchasing more of my dividend ETFs (VYM and VYMI).  This will happen this week.

While I would like to increase my holdings of WMT, PEP and SBUX, the prices are a little rich.  Even INTC which is trading just above $32 feels a tad rich (since I bought the last shares at $29).  I am not sure that INTC will come down though but SBUX may.  

As for the new stock, I am actually looking at Ford (F).  Not sure on this though - need to do some more reading.  I may buy a few shares of Ford as well as my dividend ETFs and save Unilever for later in the month when I make my "April" trade.  (These current trades are using March monies.)


Wishing all a very happy and wealthy April 2016!

Pru