February 2017 Dividends

Hi everybody.

As promised few days back on Twitter (@gentlemaninvstr), I am pleased to share my February Dividend performance report.

I am really, really superproud of my performance this month! In fact I smashed my all time record (previously December 2016 - £68.42) with an amazing £71.99 😎.

Most importantly, this new figure is +393% higher than the same month last year (Feb 2016 - £14.59).

Here is the list of dividends collected:
AT&T (T) £21.40
Vodafone (LON:VOD) £17.45
Verizon (VZ) £11.78
British Land (LON:BLND) £10.95
Apple (AAPL) £1.94
Starbucks (SBUX) £8.47

Total for the month = £71.99

This is exactly the level of performance improvement that I am trying to achieve this year. 

I am very conscious that this is relatively easy to achieve when you have just started in your investing activity, but I still like to think that the above graph shows a good result. 

It's also the final confirmation that my strategy is finally starting to pay off. Never before, in fact, I have received so many dividends in a single month - 6 different companies have rewarded me to be an investor in their business.

So far so good. January 2017 marked an incredible +53.4% YoY, but February smashed all records with its +393%!!
If it was possible to keep this pace, my financial independence would be reached far quicker than I am planning. However, let's keep in mind that this is the first year I am able to compare the performance relative to the previous financial period. I still think +20% YoY (average) is my sustainable long term growth target growth.

This is it for the moment, thanks for reading.
Yours,

The Gentleman Investor

August 2016 portfolio update

During August 2016 I have become active once again on my investment portfolio.

As a matter of fact, during this month, I have opened two new exciting positions in my investment portfolio. I am confident these will help me achieve my ling term goal of financial strengthening.

The August 2016 additions to my portfolio:

x500 Unicredit spa (BIT:UCG) @ €2.00

x431 British Land Company plc (LON:BLND) @ GBX 650 (or £6.50)

Unicredit spa is the second Italian bank for market cap. At €2/share, I consider it very cheap.

Looking at the fundamentals, the €2 price point represents a P/E of 6.06 which is very cheap, 6% dividend yield (even when considering Italian withholding tax on distributions) is great for my passive income strategy. The performance in august has been astonishing ever since I made the purchase, with a current price of €2.35. Not bad at all!

British Land Company is a much different beast. It is a British REIT business which holds estate properties in several areas, from office space to shopping centres. Because of Brexit, the general confidence in land and estate properties had fallen dramatically. Hence why I decided to risk it and invest in this kind of stock. So far so good, as the stock trades at GBX 671.

The stock pays a decent dividend (around 5%), no withholding tax on this one as it's a British company purchased through my ISA. P/E of only 5.4, another bargain!

The above investments will take me one step closer to my ultimate goal of robust cash inflow.

Few months back I kind of promised myself I would have resisted to the temptation to invest any further during August, as I wanted to maximise my firing power in September (generally considered a bearish market, as you can read here). However, as these new opportunity emerged, I decided to go ahead with the purchase. At the end of the day you never know when the next market correction will take place.

August update - ISA utilisation progress

Now the focus is on September. Hopefully this month will open up new entry points in some interesting companies I am following. 

Some names include: Johnson&Johnson, P&G, Unilever (I think I am not sufficiently exposed to the consumables sector), Pepsi, Diageo. These are just some of the many names in my watchlist.

Of course I will keep you updated through my Twitter account on any new purchase. Just waiting for the right conditions...

Thanks for reading.

Yours,

The Gentleman Investor