My K.I.S.S. Dividend Growth Portfolio: 3rd Quarter 2019 Update

Since my last KISS portfolio update in early August, it’s been a weak two months for the market. Over that time, it’s been down almost 2%. But the KISS portfolio is actually up during that time. I’ll discuss the details later on in the article, but this is another demonstration of how DGI portfolios tend to outperform during down markets.
As my regular readers know one of my primary goals is to keep things simple. By keeping my investment plan simple I think it’s easier for me to carry it out and stick with it. And I’ve seen no evidence that more complicated investment plans are any more successful than simple ones. The performance these past two months supports this contention.
Last month I made some changes to my plan and my portfolio to work even more towards my goal of keeping things simple. Here’s a summary of the changes I made last quarter:
I’ve decided to separate my Charles Schwab accounts from the rest of my KISS portfolio. This removed about $168,000 in assets from the portfolio, and therefore a large amount of dividend income, as you will see later. I streamlined my KISS screening process, dropping 3 levels of Chowder numbers down to only one. I began using the Simply Safe Dividend safety score of 40 or less as a sell signal. I closed my portfolio to new money. As I mentioned, the goal of all of these changes was to simplify my process, both in terms of my investing plan, and in terms of determining my results. I don’t believe they had a direct... Read more