Q3 2019 Dividend Portfolio Update: New September Dividend Record

September saw some heavy swings in the markets with Trump continuing to batter the Federal Reserve policy and now facing his own crisis as the Democrats have triggered the very real impeachment case.
Noise from the trade talks frontier was very limited since upcoming talks are scheduled for early October and Trump made it quite clear that he does not need a deal before 2020. However, that statement came before economic manufacturing data sent stocks plunging in early October. One of the main reasons for that disappointing showing is certainly the trade tariffs both the U.S. and China have imposed on each other.

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Portfolio Changes in September
The utility sector has been outperforming the broad markets by significant magnitude in 2019 following rising uncertainty in the markets and declining Treasury yields. Thus, I decided to partially trim my position in Southern Company (NYSE: SO), one of my portfolio anchors. Solid dividend stocks like Southern belong in every diversified dividend portfolio, but given that despite planned progress with Southern's nuclear project, the company is still facing significant capital spending needs amid an already fairly high payout ratio and relatively high leverage, the strong rally in the stock should be used to take some chips off the table.
I invested those funds into Energy Transfer (NYSE: ET) and AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) thereby increasing overall portfolio income and channeling funds into different sectors where... Read more