Monthly Update: September 2015

It's that time of the month again! A few days late but here's my monthly update for September. In general markets lost a little bit, which is not really a big deal. Especially considering the big drop from last month. There is still a lot of volatility in the market. In the table below I have presented some benchmark indicators of general market indices and my own dividend growth portfolio.

Indicator	As of 31-8	As of 30-9	% change
S&P 500 Total Return	3.661	3.570	-2,5%
Dow Jones Industrials Total Return	33.627	33.172	-1,4%
AEX GR	1.317	1.261	-4,2%
USD.EUR	0,8909	0,8953	0,5%
Portfolio value	€ 21.906	€ 21.351	-2,5%

However, since I am in it for the long haul I am not too interested in these daily or monthly fluctuations. What matters is that I keep focused on buying high quality companies which provide me with a steady stream of growing dividends.

Purchases

I deposited €600 and topped of my position in TGH. You can read about it here. After that I wrote a covered call option on my position in TGH.

Dividends received
Nine separate companies paid me dividends during this month.

• INTC: 63 shares @ $0.24 for a total of $15.12
• AFL: 28 shares @ $0.39 for a total of $10.92
• IBM: 7 shares @ $1.30 for a total of $9.10
• WMT: 20 shares @ $0.49 for a total of $9.80
• XOM: 17 shares @ $0.73 for a total of $12.41
• UNP: 15 shares @ $0.55 for a total of $8.25
• BBL: 28 shares @ $1.24 for a total of $34.72
• RDS: 97 shares @ $0.47 for a total of $45.59 (DRIP 1 share)
• UNA: 37 shares @ €0.30 for a total of €11.17

Total: around €124 after tax which is about 50% more than last year in September. It's the second time that I crossed the 100 euros per month threshold. That's looking good!

Dividend increases during this month
None

Yearly forward dividend
My 12-month forward dividend rate is now €1038, compared to €950 last month. I finally surpassed the€1000 dividend income per year milestone. My extra shares in TGH made the difference. Let's see how long it takes before I get to the next thousand milestone!

Seeking Alpha articles
I wrote one article for Seeking Alpha. It's called: Textainer: Dividend Seems Safe But Investors Need Courage and got some good reviews.

Writing Covered Calls On TGH Position To Earn Extra Income

A few days ago I wrote about my purchase of additional TGH shares. One of the reasons for my purchase was that I wanted to "experiment" a little bit with writing covered calls. This post will explain my reasoning and will show the calculations of expected values in different scenarios.

Total Return In The Industrial Gases Sector: Why Airgas Outperformed Praxair And Air Products And Chemicals

Just before the weekend another article of mine was published on Seeking Alpha. The topic of the article is total return in the industrial gases sector. Total return is based on different variables like revenue, margins, outstanding shares and valuation multiples. Insight into the breakdown of various contributors to total return provides an investor with knowledge about which components have been important and whether repeatability can be expected in the future. Fellow author Eli Inkrot has written at length about this topic, recently in a side-by-side comparison of Kroger (NYSE:KR), Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and Target (NYSE:TGT). As I have written about the industrial gases sector before, I was interested to see how this analysis worked out.

You can check it out here, it's called: Total Return In The Industrial Gases Sector: Why Airgas Outperformed Praxair And Air Products And Chemicals