5%+ Dividend Yield Portfolio: Sticking To The Plan (July 2018 Review)

Outlook "Nothing so undermines your financial judgement as the sight of your neighbor getting rich.
- J.P. Morgan
For fundamentals driven investors with a value tilt like me, July was likely a solid month with decent gains in holdings value. However, most value focused investors probably struggled to match the blazing +3.7% of the S&P 500. Despite the late month implosions of Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR), this is still very much a growth/momentum driven market with large technology companies with ever-stretched valuations leading the charge.
For investors like me, it can be trying to watch our solid, ‘on plan’ gains being eclipsed by faster movers, but I don’t think that means that we should abandon our plans and chase past returns. While my crystal ball is always a bit hazy, I believe that 2018 will end up much like the fable of the tortoise and the hare (with value stocks lagging for much of the year, but eventually catching up to the winded growth stories).
I’m not predicting doom and gloom like Michael Wilson (Morgan Stanley’s chief equity strategist) who has made the headlines recently. But I do think that the euphoria over a 4%+ quarterly U.S. GDP growth pop will settle into the reality of a messy trade war, midterms mania (with the tea leaves pointing to a soon to be divided federal government) and sputtering international economic growth as significant headwinds. If corporate profits can remain in growth mode, then the... Read more