June 2015: Dividend Income, Trading Activity and Portfolio Snapshot

Every month I am going to be providing a breakdown of the dividend income received from my shares. The overall monthly total will be included on the main “Dividends Received” page.

• Barclays--£4.10
• Bought 1 new share
• BP--£15.28
• Bought 3 new shares
• Carillion--£18.47
• Bought 5 new shares
• Imperial Tobacco--£4.49
• Royal Dutch Shell "B"--£19.68
• Bought 1 new share
• Unilever--£8.72
• XL Group--£0.30

Total for June: £71.04 ($111.65).

April and May were by far my two strongest months ever with over £170 and then over £150 dropping into my account over those months. As a result, June was always going to look a little feeble in comparison.

Nonetheless, over £71 is another strong month for my portfolio. Maybe not herculean like the last two months, but strong.

Also, unlike May, June is a more "ordinary" month in the sense that none of my payments were special dividends. All were ordinary and thus--hopefully--will be repeated next year.

Historic Performance Comparisons

Those who have been following my progress closely this year will remember that April 2015 alone pushed me towards the largest quarterly income I have every received.

With last months bumper dividends and this months additional funds this gap has been widened greatly. From £171.24 in Q4 2014 my new quarterly income "to beat" is £321.57. That may stand for a little while (maybe even until next year and beyond). However, I hope it will soon be approached at least!

And how does June 2015 compare to June 2014? Rather nicely actually. Last year I managed to scrape together £19.24. That means this year's total is edging up towards being 4 times larger than last year. That is quite a nice annual progress.

You can see more on my progress on my Dividends Received page. 

April and My Annual Goals

So how does June look in relation to my annual goals? Let's take a look:

Total Dividend Income: June represents another pretty solid step towards my 2015 dividend goal of £800. So how close am I to my target now? Well, with this month's cash I am now at a total of £557.16 for the year. This leaves me at an excellent 69.65% towards my total:

Monthly Average Income: The two previous months--which were massive totals both about double June's total--meant that the monthly average income for the year was nearing the £100 mark. That was quite staggering. Clearly this more modest total has pulled us away from the £100 average a little. Where to? £92.86. 

I am still amazed by this figure. If I could retain this throughout the rest of the year I would have an annual income of nearly £1,115. As it turns out, the next few months will be weaker which will obviously lead to a drop in this average. But I am in a strong position to reach my goal at present. 

Monthly Expenses: Also, May was another good month for expenses reduction. Last month my expenses £725. This month the continued downward shift of expenses has continued with £716 being this month's total. This means that my average annual expenses has dropped further from £775 to £745.50. That is very good going indeed. This is especially the case when you realise that last year my average monthly expenses came out at £845.

Work Freedom Day: And what about my Work Freedom Day? How many days have I bought myself for this year? The answer is--thanks to high income and low expenses--another 3 days. My dividend income now gets me up to 22 January 2015. 

All told, this should mean that that I am on track to meet my 3 February 2015 target by the end of the year!

Portfolio Additions

Also during the month I made two acquisitions. I added a new FTSE Small Cap holding (my first in that index):

• Eastern and Central European alcoholic beverage maker, Stock Spirits Group (LSE:STCK)

I also topped up one of my previous holdings:

• FTSE 100 marketing and media giant, WPP (LSE:WPP). 

All in all, these new additions should add about £29 to my predicted annual dividend income. This is pretty good though not massive as both are high dividend growth rather than high yielding shares.

However, with both WPP and Stock Spirits I will only see a small proportion of that income coming in this calendar year as I missed both the Final dividend payments for these companies. I should see interim payments for both, however.

[PS: I did also top-up AstraZeneca late on 30 June. However, I am treating that largely as a July purchase as I had no time to write it up.]

Portfolio Snapshot: Risers and Fallers

Below is the breakdown my holdings in terms of their weighting. I also include whether they:

• ▲ = Moved  up places during the month;
• ▼ = Moved down places during the month;
• ▬ = Same place as last month;
• ★ = New addition this month. 
• ★ = Large top-up purchase this month.
• ★ = Large sale this month.

	Company	Ticker	Shares	Value	Cost	Weight	Yield
1	GlaxoSmithKline	LON:GSK	193	£2,552.43	£2,987.85	9.88%	6.05%	▬
2	Interserve	LON:IRV	286	£1,889.03	£1,711.53	7.31%	3.48%	▲
3	HSBC	LON:HSBA	289	£1,647.59	£1,772.19	6.38%	5.48%	▼
4	AstraZeneca	LON:AZN	33	£1,326.27	£1,406.30	5.14%	4.44%	★
5	Diageo	LON:DGE	69	£1,277.42	£1,211.56	4.95%	2.79%	▲
6	WPP	LON:WPP	84	£1,204.11	£1,291.03	4.66%	2.66%	★
7	Royal Dutch Shell "B"	LON:RDSB	65	£1,174.55	£1,401.75	4.55%	6.63%	▼
8	Unilever	LON:ULVR	40	£1,092.00	£998.11	4.23%	2.96%	▬
9	Barclays	LON:BARC	411	£1,070.66	£1,076.63	4.15%	2.50%	▬
10	BP	LON:BP	237	£1,000.69	£1,056.67	3.87%	5.96%	▬
11	Babcock International	LON:BAB	72	£781.52	£699.55	3.03%	2.17%	▬
12	BHP Billiton	LON:BLT	58	£724.42	£1,020.52	2.80%	6.17%	▬
13	Britvic	LON:BVIC	100	£717.50	£756.06	2.78%	2.91%	▲
14	Hansteen Holdings	LON:HSTN	597	£689.54	£689.25	2.67%	4.33%	▼
15	Old Mutual	LON:OML	326	£656.89	£623.66	2.54%	4.32%	▲
16	Sky	LON:SKY	63	£656.88	£567.65	2.54%	3.07%	▲
17	Imperial Tobacco	LON:IMT	21	£646.60	£599.64	2.50%	4.16%	▼
18	Amlin	LON:AML	134	£638.38	£688.50	2.47%	5.67%	▲
19	Stock Spirits	LON:STCK	330	£636.90	£658.91	2.47%	1.38%	★
20	SSE	LON:SSE	41	£633.67	£552.99	2.45%	5.72%	▼
21	PZ Cussons	LON:PZC	171	£618.68	£519.43	2.40%	2.14%	▲
22	Legal & General	LON:LGEN	246	£613.75	£671.64	2.38%	4.89%	▼
23	Lancashire	LON:LRE	93	£573.35	£613.45	2.22%	1.55%	▲
24	National Grid	LON:NG	70	£572.04	£619.58	2.21%	5.25%	▼
25	BT Group	LON:BT.A	126	£567.25	£506.66	2.20%	2.75%	▬
26	Carillion	LON:CLLN	157	£536.78	£541.12	2.08%	5.19%	▬
27	Banco Santander	LON:BNC	98	£438.55	£515.86	1.70%	3.22%	▬
28	Tesco	LON:TSCO	155	£329.45	£518.20	1.28%	0.55%	▬
29	Seeing Machines	LON:SEE	6600	£303.60	£499.16	1.18%	0.00%	▬
30	Blinkx	LON:BLNX	500	£135.00	£493.68	0.52%	0.00%	▬
31	XL Group	NYSE:XL	3	£71.12	£55.24	0.28%	1.72%	▬
32	South32	LON:S32	58	£50.42	£0.00	0.20%	-- %	▬
	TOTAL			£25,826.99	£27,324.37	100%	4.06%

Charity

Last month I published my scheme for linking my investing activities to my charitable giving.

This month has seen an additional £3.04 added to my charitable microfinance account. This means that 2015's dividend income has resulted in £17.90 drop into that account so far. This is a hefty £14.96 ahead of last years total by this stage in the year.

For my standard charity giving total May added a minuscule 4p. My total for 2015 is now £1.89. That is about 95p ahead of 2014 up to this point in the year.

How did you do?

How did your dividend income look for June? What new holdings did you pick up or old ones topped up? 

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[Creative Commons image from Flickr user 401(k) 2012]