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Strategies & Market Trends : Dividend investing for retirement -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E_K_S who wrote (4310)	4/2/2010 9:23:11 PM
From: Steve Felix	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34328

Hi E_K_S. My main reasons for selling SGU were that I was interested in ESP and cast about for something to sell, SGU has gone ten quarters without a dividend raise, ESP has raised every year since 2000, ESP has no debt and over $4 a share in cash, trading $60 in dividends for $90 with money left over ( enough for 100 shares UVE, div. $48, which is $1 cheaper now, boo hoo ), more dividends if the ESP insiders ( 35% ) keep making sure they get paid: 3-Mar-10 $ 0.225 Dividend 3-Dec-09 $ 1.225 Dividend 2-Sep-09 $ 0.225 Dividend 3-Jun-09 $ 0.225 Dividend 4-Mar-09 $ 0.225 Dividend 4-Dec-08 $ 1.725 Dividend 2-Sep-08 $ 0.225 Dividend 4-Jun-08 $ 0.20 Dividend 4-Mar-08 $ 1.70 Dividend 10-Dec-07 $ 0.175 Dividend 30-Aug-07 $ 0.175 Dividend 30-May-07 $ 0.15 Dividend 28-Feb-07 $ 0.15 Dividend IF SUG converts to an MLP as I have heard rumors, I will probably be sorry I didn't hold. Almost sold EROC instead. Glad now I didn't since it is up 11% since I sold SUG on March 1st. I've read where their annual div. could go from .10 to .17. If it does and moves up on the news, I will probably sell. I definitely find selling the hardest thing to do. I really dislike holding 698 MCGC paying me nothing. With some shares received as dividends and the last 400 bought at $4.02, I keep telling myself to wait and they will declare a div. again. It has been slowly but steadily moving up, but so far, no div. As for the reits, I have held most of them for a while now. Other than O, which I decided to overweight a long time ago, the positions aren't large. Using O as the anchor for my IRA has proved to be one of the best decisions I have made. I don't reinvest the dividends simply since it is such a large holding. The plan was to invest in sectors other than reits and bring the O percentage down. To my dismay and delight, it isn't working right now. Dec. 31st, port = $178,169, O = $31,092 = 17.45% March 31st, port = 193,035, O = $36,528 = 18.9% Going forward I want to look at dividend growth more, and most times I'll have to settle for lower yield to start. Unless of course the market tanks. __________________________________________________________ Thanks for sharing your holdings and history. If you look at my Feb. holdings you will see my reminder to never listen to a broker again, even if he is a friend. Just removed from my account after not trading for six years. SUBMQ 300 0.00 -- -- At the time he recommended SUBM, I had to go to his office so I could sign a paper before he would let me buy 1000 LH at $3.50. LH later did a 1 for 10 reverse split and I sold at $69. And he was the professional. lol! Of course LH has split 2 for 1 at least twice since then so I wasn't so smart either. The company I worked for matched 3% of earnings or $750. It was the one place they were really cheap. As I stated before, I used all the money I could get my hands on each month to pay down the mortgages, so I only had 3% taken off, and I put in much more than they did. The last couple of years I did jack it up to 15%. They had a 401k by then. There will always be two sides to the paying off your mortgage, or investing instead argument, but it was right for me. When the wife went back to work in 1991 after taking ten years off with our daughters, we were debt free in three months, and used to living well below our means. By 1997 when our oldest started college, we had money saved and investments, and could afford to pay for college, eight years in a row, from earnings as we went along. Imho, one big plus most people miss by not living below their means is the closeness of the family. I can't improve on this so I will repeat it: "I never stop learning new investing ideas and try to apply them to my ever changing portfolio(s)."