2015 Portfolio Disappoints On Dividend Increases

Invest with income that grows is the overall purpose of my investing strategy. 2015 is still quite a good portfolio when measuring capital gain and total return. Stocks in this portfolio beat the performance of similar investments in SDY and VIG. The only weakness of significance is dividend growth.
During 2015, I used the same four screening criteria as I used in 2014. In 2014, I changed the dividend yield hurdle to 3.5% from 3.0% and continued to require 3.5% in 2015. Other than that increase in required yield, all other criteria remained the same.
Also presented is a comparison of two ETFs that specialize in dividend stocks, SDY and VIG, and my holdings.
VIG is lagging this portfolio. Notice that I do not use the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) measure of performance for VIG or SDY. Investors do not buy their shares on the first day of the year, they buy as the year goes on. Sometimes investors use dollar cost averaging and sometimes they buy when money is available to invest.
As with all my portfolios, when I buy a stock, I record the number of shares of VIG and SDY that investment would buy. Then I track how the sum of my stocks performed as compared with the sum of the VIG and SDY shares purchased.
For an income investor, the two stocks that are most disappointing are ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) and Waddell & Reed (NYSE: WDR) because they reduced their dividends. Based on 100 shares, COP reduced the dividend from $292 to $106 and WDR reduced their... Read more