My fellow personal finance blogger 2million did an interesting exercise to tabulate all stock dividend income he received in 2007. While I'm not exactly boasting my self as a dividend investor, my value investing style drives me to many companies that pay handsome dividends. Therefore, I found it is quite useful to ask myself the question: how much stock dividend did I receive in 2007?
The quick answer: over $5,000. The table below includes the line item details, including expected Q4 dividend that has already been announced but not yet paid out.
While the annual dividend receipt of $5,000 is quite insignificant compared with my portfolio size of over $850,000, bear in mind it only comes from my individual stock holdings, which grew from about $200,000 at the start of the year to about $280,000 by the end of November. The $5,000 dividend payout, therefore, represents about a 2.0% dividend yield for my individual stock holdings.
It is amazing that at one point in November, Bank of America is yielding 6% and Citigroup is yielding 7%. It reminds me of 2002-2004 where I invested in R. J. Reynolds and Altria when they were facing apparently huge litigation risks and yielded over 5%. Am I bottom fishing again?