5%+ Dividend Yield Portfolio: Winning With A Defensive Tilt (October 2019 Review)

Musings October was especially nice for home gamers like myself (record market highs AND many online brokerages eliminating stock trading fees). I was certainly busy with a month of repositioning my portfolio to skew even more conservatively amidst the new price highs (but yawn-worthy economic performance).
October was also gratifying for me because value strategies (like mine) finally etched a rare 2019 win (though my low volatility factor skew puzzlingly ended up on the bottom… proving I can't have everything that I want).

Source: S&P Global
Of course, value and dividends are still mostly lagging on the year (though the performance of any of these factors is well above my stated investment strategy goal of 5-15% annual gains).

Source: S&P Global
While the 2019 YTD results make a fairly compelling argument to just own the S&P 500 and not focus on factor investing, the returns over the past 15 years tell a different story. Even with the lowly performance of low volatility high dividend strategies in 2019 (and much of the recent past), across the full business cycle, it is still the returns leader (so don't let a limited data set cause you to change strategies).

Source: S&P Global
October 2019 Review October 2019 was another solid one in the markets with record highs reached for U.S. equities. For the month, the S&P 500 posted a 2.17% result which I edged out with a 2.18% gain. YTD, I am up 12.4% vs. the 23.2%... Read more