Trades – August No-Cost Dividend Growth Portfolio Purchases

August Loyal3 No-Cost Dividend Growth Portfolio Purchases - Rising Stream

After my summer break, I am back to reporting my trade activities in a more timely fashion. With my passive income updates now finished up through July, I thought I’d share my August purchases prior to sharing the passive income update. In a change from my previous investment strategy with Loyal3 of just investing $300 per month in my no-cost dividend growth portfolio, I have decided to increase my purchases to $500 per month for the remainder of the year. At the end of the year I will evaluate my progress and the portfolio and determine how I will proceed in 2015.

For those unaware, Loyal3 is a fantastic opportunity for dividend growth investors to invest in a nice bucket of dividend growth stocks with as little as $10 per transaction with NO transaction. I’ve been fortunate enough to begin building my own no-cost dividend growth portfolio and am seeing tremendous success thus far. Of course the kicker to all of this is the ability to utilize your credit card to make the purchases and pick up the credit card rewards as you arbitrage the system. Obviously, responsible usage of a credit card is required if you take this option, however  you do gain the ability to juice your first year yield by +1% depending on your rewards card!

For the month of August, I made a total of 14 purchases in this account, in two separate batches, with $500 being invested during the stock market dip at the beginning of the month, and the remaining $200 being made towards the end of the month. The reason for the extra $200 purchase was to make up for only investing $300 during the month of July. I intended on expanding to $500 per month and did not make timely transactions in order to reflect that increase. Overall, I invested in six different companies, all of which were existing positions in my Loyal3 account.

August Loyal3 Trades

Given the slew of purchase, I am forgoing the brief summaries on each position, and have just summarized the pertinent details in the chart below. Some base reasoning behind the purchases can be found below the chart.

Trades - August Loyal3 No-Cost Dividend Growth Portfolio Purchases Chart - KO MAT MCD PEP UL WMT

The two biggest values I saw in August were the continued weakness in Mattel and McDonald’s as both are facing some headwinds. These were the two companies I made purchases of at the beginning of August as well as towards the end of the month. I continue to slowly add to other positions as they dip and appear to be within my purchase range. I do believe these two companies will persevere, and in 20 years still be viable, dividend-generating businesses.

I generally like Coca-Cola (KO) above a 3% yield and Pepsi above a 2.9% yield. The difference in my expectations between those two companies stems from the greater growth potential for Pepsi given the size of its non-beverage revenue streams. While Walmart (WMT) isn’t a steal, I am happy with anything in the below the $75 mark currently. Lastly, Unilever is an international consumer goods behemoth, and I am happy to snag shares on dips, like the one at the beginning of August.

August Loyal3 Purchase Summary

As with my previous transactions, these took two days to process from the time I put the order in till the time the transactions occurred. All the aforementioned transactions were made with my credit card and did not receive any additional fees, thus successfully arbitraging the process for credit card rewards. August’s purchases resulted in a total increase of $24.69 to my forward 12-month dividends and carried an overall average yield on cost of 3.53%.

My total no-cost Loyal3 dividend growth portfolio consists of seven holdings with a forward 12-month dividend total of $99.48. I am pumped for how far this portfolio has come in such a short period of time. I am looking forward to September when the dividends produced will be large enough to selectively reinvest without new capital. I recently covered this concept with my Snowball City – Loyal3 Dividends post. The full details of this portfolio, updated with these purchases, can be seen on my Dividend Growth page.

If you are interested in checking out Loyal3 and have questions, feel free to let me know!

What purchases are you looking at making in the near future?

Flickr: Aamir Choudhry

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Comments

  1. W2R,

    Nice buys there. Gotta love being able to pick up shares in blue chips like WMT, PEP, and KO at no cost. :)

    I might, just might, have enough capital for another purchase this month.

    Keep up the great work! Those $500/month contributions will add up quicker than you might expect.

    Best wishes.

    • Thanks DM! I am a big fan of Loyal3 and how I’ve been able to build a portfolio there with them essentially paying me (love the credit card rewards!). Looking at some projections as well as thinking about future plans past 2014, you’re right, those $500 amounts do add up quickly.

      I too was actually able to make a real purchase in September in my main DG account in September. More details to come! I should be back on track to start making many more of these in the near future.

  2. W2R,
    I’ve been more aggressive this month with Loyal3 and my regular accounts. Added 2 new DG stocks in Loyal3 that I’ll be disclosing next week in my monthly income update post. That makes 5 companies I’m buying monthly there via credit card (I get 1.5% :). Still may add a few more in the future. Can’t wait to see some significant dividends start piling up!
    -RBD

    • Good to hear you’ve been more aggressive this past month. I’m looking forward to seeing what other positions you’ve added to your monthly buy list. And soon enough they will start materially adding up!

      Thanks for stopping by RBD!

  3. This article along with small Loyal3 purchases just shows how fast something can grow even in small increments. The whole idea of dividend investing is to be consistent and constantly nibble every month and watch after a year or two how far you have come. Thanks for sharing your recent purchases with us.

    • Absolutely. The power of doing something as opposed to nothing is tremendous, and examples like my Loyal3 portfolio are great demonstrations of this in action.

      Appreciate you commenting, DivHut!

  4. Thank you so much for this post. I had no idea about Loyal3. I just joined up. No cost trades are excellent.

    Does Loyal3 reinvest your dividends? Or do they deposit the money into your account?

    Let me ask you, are you keeping your shares past the short term capital term window or are you selling them off for profit? Are you reinvesting dividends?

    • Glad you decided to sign up! As for my dividends in the account, they are paid out as cash, and either combined with new capital or if they add up to greater than $10, can be selectively reinvested for free on their own. I posted Snowball City – Loyal3 Dividends explaining how dividends work in the account. I am reinvesting all my dividends selectively. Up to this point they have only been combined with new capital, but that will change this month and going forward as the quantity I receive gets larger. Let me know if you have any other questions about dividends and I’ll try to answer them.

      As for the holdings, I have no desire to sell any of them now or in the near future. I am building a growing stream of passive income and selling investments tends to take away from this. Generally speaking I will only sell an investment if it no longer meets the requirements of me holding the position further for continued income and growth.

      Thanks for stopping by and good luck with your new account.

  5. Very nice diversified purchase, I have to admit that Loyal3 has been a great tool purchasing stocks for free. Makes me wonder sometimes.

  6. Hi W2R! Glad you are enjoying Loyal3! I have gotten into a position where my main investing account is accrueing cash much more slowly now that I am practically fully invested in it.

    Being able to buy 25-50 per week helps me get my investing fix! Over the summer I have been adding to all the same positions as you with the exception being Pepsi.

    Take care!

    • I loved the, “get your investment fix” as it really does make sense. Part of investing is a, “hurry up and wait” mentality. Wait for a good buy, fresh capital, or piled up dividends. Loyal3 does help take the edge off so to speak when it comes to that drive to keep growing the dividend income stream. I’m glad you were finding success over the summer with similar purchases.

      Appreciate you stopping by!

  7. Nice buys! I got my sons interested enough to sign up for loyal3. They’re each investing $30 per month and have committed to do so for 30 years. The no commissions thing makes it a no brainer for young investors!

    • Awesome! Good to hear you were able to convince them! You’d be surprised how a little bit can add up!

      Thanks for stopping by FerdiS! I love that your icon is a snapshot of your actual dividend growth.

  8. W2R, Nice post. I am also regularly investing in loyal3 now so come to your site regularly to check the loyal3 updates.

    I was wondering how you were able to place more than $50 purchase orders with credit cards. Are you splitting it up into more than one transactions? Also, which credit card can give max cash back when used with Loyal3? Is there any cc offering higher than 2%?

    • Good to have you as a regular reader and another fellow investor at Loyal3. For my purchases, I make all of them in $50 increments unless I’ve got some available cash due to dividends, in which case it will be $10. As for the best credit card, I am not sure of the highest one out there, but I am aware of some that have a 1.5% cash back option.

    • I just wanted to leave a quick note here. I stumbled upon this blog when I first heard about Loyal3 and wanted to read a few more reviews about how they operated before starting an account a few months ago. I have found that you can purchase more than $50 dollars with a credit card in one day if you are willing to put some time into it. They seem to allow $50 dollar credit card purchases every hour, I have used this over the weekend if I want to make a larger purchase of a stock at the same purchase price. The transactions will still post for $50 each, but you can have more than one in a day for the same stock.

      • Scott, thanks for your comments and for stopping by. I actually make use of this “exemption” so to speak and can make multiple $50 purchases every couple of minutes for the same stock. In my experience, it actually only takes a minute or two to reset the ability to make duplicate purchases. Additionally, logging out and then back in seems to also do the trick.

        Thanks again for reading and commenting, much appreciated!

  9. Thanks to you, I’m also investing in loyal3, but only about $50/mth. Will hopefully be more once the whole moving thing settles down and we have money again!

  10. How does Loyal3 make money?

    • S, I am pulling information directly from their site in the support area and quoting it below:

      LOYAL3 receives fees from companies that have a Social Stock Plan on our platform and will be compensated in its role in IPOs. For other stocks on our platform, LOYAL3 does not receive fees.

      Based on that information, and discussions I’ve had with other investors, they are not concerned with generating revenue from their retail business. Instead, they utilize the retail side to facilitate the business to business relationships they are cultivating with various companies. I hope that answers your question!

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