Recent Sell - Intel (INTC)

Earlier this week I sold my stake in Intel (INTC) after the company announced they would not be raising the dividend again next quarter. This will be the 8th straight quarter that Intel has failed to raise it's dividend. I thought that this would be the quarter they would raise it but that wasn't the case. I can't sit by and keep my money in a company which has lost it's commitment to it's dividend so I sold. With this sale I did realize about an 18% capital gain in the stock which I can't complain about at all.

With the funds available from the sale I went on a bit of a shopping spree though! I bought shares in three solid dividend payers ....

1 - Pepsi (PEP) 15 shares of Pepsi at $83
2 - Chevron (CVX) 25 shares at $119.14
3 - McDonalds (MCD) 12 shares at $97.77

The sale of Intel leaves me light in the tech sector so I will be keeping my eyes on some tech companies like Cisco for possible future purchases.

Tracking Recent Buys From Fellow Dividend Investors

I follow or at least visit many other dividend growth investing blogs like mine. You can find many of them in my blogroll. I thought it might be interesting to compile a list of recent buys that other dividend investors have made recently and see if there are any trends that appear. In this case I tracked recent purchases from 14 other dividend growth investors for the month of March and below are the results.

In total there were 32 total purchases and 18 different stocks which were purchased. For instance Dividend Ladder, Compounding Income, Accumulating Assets, and Write Your Own Reality all purchased shares of Coca-Cola (KO). While Dividend Mantra and Passive Income Pursuit decided to buy shares of General Electric. There were 12 other stocks which were only purchased once. Those stocks include MO, CVX, BNS, UL, BP, UNP, T, APU, MDP, ESU, CLX, and TIS. Clearly KMI has been a big favorite recently. KMI has been under some selling pressure after a negative Barrons article was published but many investors like Dividend Hawk are seeing a bargain here.

Full Disclosure: I currently own shares of KMI,KO,MCD,PEP,MO,CVX,T, and CLX.

Recent Buy - Pepsico (PEP)

This feels like a bit of a deja vu since I just bought Coke (KO) but earlier this week I purchased shares of the soft drink giant Pepsico (PEP). This is my first position in the stock and I purchased 14 shares at $81.46 a share. I really wish I would have had the money to make this purchase a few weeks ago when Pepsi was around $78 !!! Recently PEP announced a generous 15.4% dividend increase which brings the dividend yield from 2.8% up to around 3.3% which is great.

PepsiCo, Inc. (PepsiCo), incorporated on November 13, 1986, is a global food and beverage company. Through the Company's bottlers, contract manufacturers and other partners, the Company makes, markets, sells and distributes a range of foods and beverages in more than 200 countries and territories.

PEP Basic Statistics

• Ticker Symbol:PEP
• PE Ratio: 19
• Yield: 2.8%
• Dividend Growth 10yr:  13%
• Payout Ratio: 52%
• Market cap: $126 B
• Website: http://www.pepsico.com

February Dividend Update

I finally broke through the $200 barrier this month! My total dividend income for February totaled $207.52 making this my highest dividend total ever. This is a slight improvement over last quarter where I earned $193.80 in November and it is far more than I earned last year in February where I earned $126.21. You can see all of my dividend income here.

This adds over $200 that I can use for my next purchase which looks like it will be around mid month. I'm still not sure what I'm going to buy just yet but I have my eye on a few stocks including PEP and KMI. Well see how things shape up until then.

Dividend Increases

AT&T (T) - From .45 to .46

Feburary Purchases

Coca Cola (KO) - 32 Shares @ $38

COMPANY	DESCRIPTION	SYMBOL	AMOUNT
Kinder Morgan	QUALIFIED DIVIDEND	KMI	25.42
Proctor & Gamble	QUALIFIED DIVIDEND	PG	20.45
People's United Financial	QUALIFIED DIVIDEND	PBCT	36.24
Realty Income	ORDINARY DIVIDEND	O	18.22
Clorox	QUALIFIED DIVIDEND	CLX	13.49
AT&T	QUALIFIED DIVIDEND	T	45.08
General Mills	QUALIFIED DIVIDEND	GIS	20.90
WGL Holdings	QUALIFIED DIVIDEND	WGL	27.72