It’s been exactly 1 year since my first post, What is a Dividend?
I want to thank all of my readers and fellow writers that have helped make this site valuable.
In the 12 months since the inception of this site, Dividend Monk has received over 220,000 page views and over 100,000 visits. And many of my articles are re-published or published exclusively on Seeking Alpha, where I’ve received another couple hundred thousand page views. In addition, the number of subscribers to this site has grown from zero to 650 over this period.
Some of my most well-received articles have been the following:
New To Investing:
8 Steps to Build Wealth
All About Dividend Growth Investing
Stock Ideas
5 Stocks That Have Gone Nowhere For a Decade
7 Stocks With Fantastic Balance Sheets
Stock Analysis Reports:
National Presto (NPK)
Medtronic Inc (MDT)
Texas Instruments (TXN)
Chubb Corporation (CB)
Chevron Corporation (CVX)
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (BIP)
Exxon Mobil (XOM)
Intel Corporation (INTC)
AGL Resources (AGL)
Thanks again to all of my readers and fellow writers. I’ve got substantial upcoming content planned, including a long series of articles on building and managing a dividend portfolio, continued individual stock analysis, and several updates to companies I’ve published articles on.
-Matt
Congratulations Matt! You have a strong following!
Congrats Matt!!! Happy Anniversary!
Congrats Matt!!!
Keep up the good work. I enjoy your no-nonsense writing style, crisp articles and I certainly respect all the effort you pour into each stock analysis, it’s great stuff.
I look forward to another year of chatting with you.
Cheers,
Mark
Congratulations! Well done on your growth and exposure.
Looking forward to your future posts!
Congratulations! Happy Anniversary
You are doing a great work
many thanks
Fulvio from Italy
Congratulations! You’ve put up some great content, and I look forward to more!
Congratulations! I always enjoy reading your blog posts.
I’ve certainly enjoyed reading your articles over the past year and you’ve even inspired me to look deeper into a few financial statements from companies you’ve reviewed. I picked up EXC and added to my JNJ and XOM positions after reviewing your posts. So far so good!
I would be curious though, Matt, to see a post from you comparing your returns to those of SPY or another broad index fund. I’m sure it could get tricky with all the dividend reinvestments and compounding interest calculations and all, but I would be really interested to see how you’ve been doing overall!
Keep up the good work, buddy.
Congrats Matt, looking forward to more quality content.
Hi Pey,
I’ve considered a bit about discussing my returns. As you mentioned, dividend reinvestment makes it a tricky calculation, and so does the fact that I continually add to my portfolio. It’s doable, but requires a lot of accounting and I already have an approximation of my rate of return.
Another issue is deciding on what timeline to use. I’ve considered posting yearly progress reports regarding my portfolio, but one year for a long-term investor is nothing and is influenced mainly by macro trends. For instance, last year, my oil stocks outperformed, texas instruments outperformed, my heath care stocks underperformed, my insurance underperformed, Emerson outperformed, BIP outperformed, my consumer stocks underperformed, and NPK underperformed but by buying big on dips, my NPK position outperformed.
I may wait a bit longer and then post results for 3 year performance for my portfolio stocks. Or I may compare 3 year performance to my “conclusion” section of all reports I’ve done, to see how accurate the conclusions have been. At this point I’m just kind of thinking about various options.
“Another issue is deciding on what timeline to use…one year for a long-term investor is nothing and is influenced mainly by macro trends.”
Great point. I have a buddy who is an avid growth stock investor. He constantly wants to compare his alpha with me and my response is always, “you may have me now, but let’s talk again in 20 years and see who’s outperforming whom.”
As you’ve eloquently explained, a one year, two year and sometimes even a 15 year time line means significantly less to a deep value, dividend appreciation investor.
Nevertheless, it’s still interesting to see how our returns stack up. For me, it’s encouraged me to place a small amount of money in growth stocks and I’ve had good success with smaller cap “riskier” stocks in our current financial markets. I plan to allocate less and less to these types of stocks as I near retirement. That’s a long time away, though, so it may pay to be a bit more risky now and more conservative later.
Maybe I’ll consult my crystal ball and get back to you!