July

Hello everyone and welcome to JULY!

It's currently the 3rd of July so happy Fourth of July Eve! I am a little late though, we had dividends come in on the 1st. It wasn't much but it was something nonetheless; $1.11 in total to start off the month. First investing day of the month is scheduled to be on the 5th, however I don't think the market will be open on that day so most likely the buy trades will go through on the 6th. I don't know yet. For now, I'll just keep it as if it was on the 5th.

It's July 6th and with the latest 500 dollar buy, that finally pushes us above 10 THOUSAND DOLLARS. Huge milestone! The first 10K. It took a whopping 18 months to get here so I'm hoping that the next milestone at 20K will come much sooner. I'll be making that a challenge.

We're just over the middle of July, It's currently July 16th and I completely forgot this but T. Rowe Group Inc. (TROW) actually tied Store Capital Corp (STOR) for the highest dividend of $3.18 which Store Capital actually got all the way back in April. Now unfortunately for T. Rowe, Store Capital was like "Yeah.... I don't think so" and decided to pay me out $3.50 on the 15th. Once again, Store Capital maintains its reign as the stock with the highest dividend payed out so far. Other than that, July has been pretty silent. Most of the relevant stuff so far has been the FED being fed up with inflation and big banks declaring their increased preferred dividends. Though other stocks have also declared their divdends recently. India decided to ban Mastercard Incorporated - Class A (MA) from issuing new cards come July 22nd and honestly, I'm still going to keep Mastercard in my portfolio. I feel as though this setback for Mastercard is a temporary one and one that they can easily brush off.

July 22nd and I AM LATE! Man that July 19th 700 point Dow sell off was crazy! My portfolio dropped just about 200 dollars. When my buy trades were over I was like .... Okay, why are my buys not coming through??? My portfolio had a total value of about 10.3K just before the buys, about an hour later the buys finished and my portfolio is somehow at 10.1K. I was like HUH?????? So what caused the market sell off on Monday? *INFLATION* Here we go again with the inflation talks. Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose to 5.4% well ahead of fed expectations. Honestly, I mean I'm still in it for the long term. This is strictly for passive income to achieve the big goal of financial indepence so whatever downturn or bump on the road that comes, I'm just going to keep on driving. At the end of the day, I mean you're only really buying at cheaper prices. Aside from outside occurrences, there are some portfolio updates to announce. Tomorrow July 23rd, unfortunately, I have decided to sell two company holdings. Those being Royal Bank of Canada (RY) and Toronto Dominion Bank (TD). Now while those companies may be really good and have really good dividend stats as well as being reliable, I was honestly getting tired of having to pay that foreign tax everytime those companies paid me out. The good news though is that in replacement of those two I have to decided to induct Franklin Resources, Inc. (BEN) into the portfolio! Ben is currently hovering at a Forward PE ratio of just above 9 with a 3.74% dividend yield according to Seeking Alpha. It has consistently had a stable payout ratio and while growth has slowed down for the company, its recent aquisition/merger of Legg Mason, Inc (LM) put the combined group at being one of the biggest independent asset managers on the planet. Congrats to Ben for making it into the portfolio! That's not all though... Welcome to! Enbridge Inc (ENB), Valero Energy Corp. (VLO), and VICI Properties Inc (VICI). I'm very excited to be buying some shares of these guys very soon!