I generally update the taxable trading account holdings on a regular basis to keep readers informed on recent moves, market outlook and performance. For years, I've also held a less active, more dividend-focused self-directed Roth IRA. Essentially, rather than investing in mutual funds for this portion of my Roth IRA holdings, I buy my own shares since I can't find the mix I'm looking for in any mutual fund. Of course, I have another portion of my IRA holdings in a nice low-fee Vanguard S&P500 index fund. However, given the availability of double-digit dividend yield stocks and the tax protection of dividends offered through a self directed Roth IRA, I find it advantageous to hold these shares here.
Since I haven't posted these results in a while, I'm sharing the 1 month return as of tonight 4/28/08. The results are actually much better than my active account (perhaps that's telling me something), more than doubling the return of the major indices PLUS an average yield of over 13% per year which I didn't factor in to my returns (add about 1% per month to the return). The S&P500 returned 6.2% and the portfolio returned 12.6% plus dividends. An additional factor to consider is that several of these holdings have appreciated 50% plus and at the time of purchase, the yield was much higher, but to be conservative, I'm reporting the current yield at the present discounted rate.
Standouts were:
AFN, my foray back into the financials. I took a bold move here several weeks back and posted the background and rationale on the
"ridiculous yielder" AFN HERE.
Shippers FRO and SFL have continued to do quite well in the face of the continued rising commodities boom. Their pricing power seems unstoppable at this point.
PCU, the Peruvian copper miner pretty much tracks with the price of copper, so no complaints over the 12% yield there.
And finally, WBD has performed spectacularly of late. I didn't buy this one for the yield, but wanted to purchase and was tapped out in my taxable account, so I got into this one at 100 and have a 27% gain to date; 23% for the month.
