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Spring is almost here and the stock market keeps going up much like the temperatures.
The last few weeks of winter(besides this weekend) have been rather temperate and I'm looking forward to a quick switch over to one of my favorite seasons.
This has been another good month for stock market returns and likely a good month for most portfolios as pretty much everything has continued to trend up. The likelihood of a rate hike soon is pretty high which might cause some income payers to take a brief pause and perhaps present some opportunities.
February isn't a huge dividend month for me but I'm already looking forward into March which is the first big payment I'll get in 2017. I'm hoping that the first quarter of 2017(Q1 2017) can beat Q3 2016 which would be great to see and would mean huge growth over Q1 2016 in terms of dividend payments.
I'm eager to start seeing those payments toward the end of this month but for now I'll have to settle at looking at February.
Let's take a look at how Steve did in February 2017.
February comes in with $79.60! This is an increase from last year's $79.11 but still a rather low month.
If you've read my blog before, you know this is because of my heavy ETF/mutual fund strategy which really centers dividends in the quarter ending months as you can see above.
This means this was another tough month for Steve my dividend employee but March should look a lot better. In February, Steve earned $.47/hr so not quite a half dollar. This brings his total for the year to $.41/hr.
Not great for Steve. Reinvesting that money at my average yield means I'm adding about 15 cents per month in income on a go forward basis.
The growth here wasn't great but I'm not concerned about growth m/m but do want to see growth q/q.
Q1 2016 came in at $1176.35 and I'm at $135.16 after the first two months in 2017. That means that I'd need $1041.19 in dividends in March to beat that which I think is easily done.
I'd actually like to beat my Q3 2016 numbers which was $1399.11 and to do that I'd need $1263.95 in March which I think is possible even if a stretch based on my September dividends which is the last comparable month.
In September 2016, I earned $1265.09 and I've made significant contributions since then so I think that number is achievable if payouts in March are similar to September. The problem is that March is often a good deal lower than September on some funds so it's hard to say this is definite since ETF/mutual fund payouts do differ quarter to quarter but I hopeful about it now.
The above graph shows just the latest 12 months but here's how it looks since I started tracking this data.
I'm eager to see how this graph looks once I get a few years of data in there since it's rather barren right now. This graphs makes the smaller months a bit more visible than the above graph as well but it is still largely dominated by March, June, September and definitely December.
That's it for today. Steve didn't do great this month but his hourly wage for the year is sure to spike after March before settling back down in April and May.
I've got the Portfolio update coming up soon and if the market cooperates then it might be the month I close in on 400k which is very exciting!
Thanks for reading. How as your February and are you looking forward to March just like I am?
