Investing in dividend growth stocks is a long-term proposition. One of the beauties of following a dividend growth strategy is that you don't have to watch your portfolio or the market on a daily basis. For the most part, daily, monthly and yearly movements are just noise in the system.My normal practice is to refresh my analytical spreadsheets each Friday with updated price information on the 200+ stocks that I follow. Even then, I don't normally look at the value of my portfolio or the performance of individual stocks.
However, each quarter I update my income portfolio's performance and benchmark it against the S&P 500 and other portfolios. At that time I will look at performance of individual stocks to understand the overall performance the portfolio.
In April, I updated my Income Portfolio's performance for the first quarter. Building on that, here are my income portfolio's top and bottom 5 performers for the year through May 13, 2011:
Top Performers
#5. Leggett & Platt Inc. (LEG)Leggett & Platt Inc makes a broad line of bedding and furniture components and other home, office and commercial furnishings, as well as diversified products for non-furnishings markets.
Yield: 4.2% | 2011 Total Return: 20.6%
#4. Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP)
Automatic Data Processing Inc. is one of the world's largest independent computing services companies, providing a broad range of data processing services.
Yield: 2.7% | 2011 Total Return: 21.5%
#3. Universal Health Realty Income Trust (UHT)
Universal Health Realty Income Trust, a real estate investment trust (REIT), invests in healthcare and human service related facilities.
Yield: 5.8% | 2011 Total Return: 21.7%
#2. Owens & Minor, Inc. (OMI)
Owens & Minor Inc. is a leading domestic distributor of medical and surgical supplies to the acute care market, a health care supply chain management company, and a direct-to-consumer (DTC) supplier of testing and monitoring supplies for diabetes.
Yield: 2.3% | 2011 Total Return: 23.2%
#1. Intel Corporation (INTC)
Intel Corporation is the world's largest manufacturer of microprocessors, the central processing units of PCs, and also produces other semiconductor products.
Yield: 3.1% | 2011 Total Return: 50.9%
Bottom Performers
#5 Nucor Corp. (NUE)Nucor Corporation is the largest minimill steelmaker in the U.S., Nucor has one of the most diverse product lines of any steelmaker in the Americas.
Yield: 3.5% | 2011 Total Return: -0.3%
#4. Cincinnati Financial Corp. (CINF)
Cincinnati Financial Corp. markets primarily property and casualty coverage. It also conducts life insurance and asset management operations.
Yield: 5.3% | 2011 Total Return: -0.9%
#3. Commercial Net Lease Realty, Inc. (NNN)
National Retail Properties, Inc. invests in high-quality, freestanding retail properties subject to long-term net leases with major retail tenants.
Yield: 5.9% | 2011 Total Return: -1.0%
#2. CenturyLink Inc. (CTL)
CenturyLink, Inc. provides voice service to 6.5 million customers and Internet service to 2.4 million customers in rural towns as well as larger cities such as Las Vegas.
Yield: 6.7% | 2011 Total Return: -5.6%
#1. Harleysville Group Inc. (HGIC)
Harleysville Group Inc. underwrites a broad array of personal and commercial coverages. These insurance coverages are marketed primarily in the Eastern and Midwestern United States.
Yield: 4.6% | 2011 Total Return: -11.3%
To avoid short-term anomalies, I excluded stocks that I did not own on January 1, 2011 from the above lists. As noted above, investing in dividend growth stocks is a long-term proposition, but sometimes it is nice to see that our portfolio is performing well, in addition to collecting higher dividends each month.
Full Disclosure: Long in all the aforementioned securities. See a list of all my income holdings here.
Related Posts
- When To Sell A Dividend Stock
- My Top 6 Performing Dividend Stocks Just Might Surprise You
- 10 Stocks With Sustainable Dividend Growth
- Income Annuities vs. Dividend Stocks
- 10 Dividend Stocks Delivering A Quick Payback
(Photo: Steve Woods)
