Catch up post! (inactive in past few months)

I might have mentioned in one of my earlier posts or replies that my wife and I bought a house. The builders will start soon and are expected to be ready in Q2 2017. Because of this purchase my cash flow towards investments has been limited the past months (exactly zero to be precise). Even though my portfolio kept chugging along just fine, I didn't feel the need to update this site each month.

However, this post is meant to offer a short update on the portfolio.

Total return
In the table below I have presented some benchmarks to review how my portfolio has performed year-to-date.

Indicator	As of 1-1	As of 31-7	% change
S&P 500 Total Return	3821,6	4114,51	+7,7%
Dow Jones Industrials Total Return	35.726	38.361	+7,4%
AEX GR	1.328	1.387	+4,4%
USD.EUR	0,9208	0,9017	-2,1%
Portfolio value	€ 22.570	€ 24.458	+8,4%

In the past few months the markets went up and down quite violently sometimes. Right now the markets have gained between 4,4% and 7,7% year-to-date (total return). My portfolio gained a little bit more! Since I didn't deposit any new money in the last few months I can safely compare the change %'s. In the end it's not bad at all to see the growth in the portfolio without me doing (hardly) anything at all.

Portfolio activity
I have done a few things:

• 3 new shares of RDS (DRIP)
• 1 new share of Accell (DRIP)

Sold my position in:

• TGH. My shares were called at $12.50 because of a covered call option play. Current stockprice is $11.37 so it's actually not bad I guess.
• Baxalta: sold my shares because of the merger with Shire. I didn't research the merger and didn't want to end up with a few shares of Shire. The price had run up quite nicely in the prior months.

New position in:

• TROW: decent valuation, dividend and good dividend growth prospects. I like the asset management business model and it' s actually some sort of leveraged play on the stockmarket as a whole.

Current cash position is good for 1 new position (or to add to an existing position).

Dividends

I've received € 427 in dividends in the past few months. This is slightly lower than last year but that was to be expected after a few dividend cuts (BBL, TGH, KMI) which seriously impacted dividend income in the past months.

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul
2015	€ 29	€ 49	€ 128	€ 55	€ 69	€ 87	€ 31
2016	€ 53	€ 39	€ 119	€ 34	€ 59	€ 98	€ 25
Y-o-y change%	+83%	-20%	-7%	-38%	-14%	+13%	-19%

Outlook

I don't expect to deposit any new money to my dividend portfolio this year. I do plan to keep reinvesting the dividends and open a new position if the cash position is big enough.