John's September Dividend Increases And Income Tracker - Retirement Accounts

Investment Thesis September marks the seventh month that I have been tracking John's retirement accounts in an article. Since the beginning of January 2018, his portfolio has produced the following results:
$10,011.01/Dividend Income through August 31, 2018. On February 1, 2018, we began tracking the active tracking active trades which have provided a total realized gain of $8,119.90 through August 31, 2018. If we combine trading income and dividends, we can approximate an average monthly income of $2,140.18/mo. Over the last month, we have seen challenging market conditions as stocks from nearly every industry have been negatively impacted. Fortunately, John has a number of real estate investment trusts (REITs) and utility stocks that have helped provide stability for his portfolio and helped reduce the paper losses when compared to his wife Jane's retirement account.
^SPGREIT data by YCharts
As you can see, REITs and utilities as a whole have outperformed the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 over the course of the last month. Utilities were clearly the strongest performer followed by REITs (which quickly leveled off around -3%). The Dow Jones and the S&P 500 continued to fall during the month of October and have continued to struggle even as REITs and Utilities have continued to perform well.
Because of this, we saw reduced paper losses in John's retirement accounts when compared with the paper losses in Jane's retirement accounts. If we compare... Read more