Category: Income investing

I’ve been tracking my dividend/income account for some time, to see how I could create an income stream out of my investments, rather than just depending on growth stocks and selling them off as I move through retirement and use my  bucket system. The old traditional way was to use dividend paying stocks and bonds to live on (reinvesting some of them to keep up with inflation).

This worked for many years, until the dot.com bust and the “great recession,” when the US Fed dropped interest rates to try and keep the economy out of recession and to fend off deflation – A terrible economic situation, where prices tomorrow will be cheaper than today. When you get a continuous time period of deflation (see America’s great depression of the 1930s) its hard to get the economic engine going again. Folks wait to purchase, because it will be cheaper tomorrow.

Well, due to low interest rates, US stock dividends and bond dividends have been small pickings, and the result is difficulty for folks who want to follow traditional ways of investing their retirement money and drawing down. As I noted at the beginning of the year, my attempts haven’t been that good.

In the early part of the year, I chose to ditch my bonds in the account (which made up 50% of it) and go to a 50/50 split of dividend stocks and REITs. Yes, I know, great timing! So how has it gone for the first quarter? Not bad from a dividend standpoint, but sucky from a stock value standpoint.

So I cashed in $1,414 in dividends in 1^st qtr 2020 versus only getting $1,192 in 1^st quarter 2019 – an 18.6% increase in income (not too shabby). However, 1^st qtr 2019 investments were worth $132,151, so that was painful. However, if the objective was to get and live off the income, I could let the investments sit there and move back up. I’m not sure if these companies will cut their dividends in the new year, we’ll have to see.

So the experiment continues.  Right now, I still think investing in index funds and going for growth is the better way to go, and that is where the lions share of my investments are.

Othalafehu dividend performance for 1st qtr

Mr. 39 Months

Like most experienced FIRE investors, I don’t see the recent market “correction” as a disaster – I see it as a buying opportunity! The stock market is the only place where people go into despair when things go on sale. Very odd.

I wrote about the potential for a market correction back at the beginning of the year. At that time, the market timing signals laid out by Ben Stein were heavily weighted towards “do not buy additional stocks.” Note that this didn’t say to sell stocks, only that purchasing additional ones at the inflated prices of Jan 2020 was unwise. In this case, it appears the market timing had some validity.

So now that the market has fallen 30%+, I’m interested in potentially changing my current investment allocation, and purchasing more stock now that it has fallen, and reduce my new investments in bonds. Again, the idea is not to sell your current investments, but to guide you on what to purchase going forward. So what do the tea leaves of market timing say?

If you remember there were four categories of the timing:

1. Price (Current price of S&P500 vs 15 year trend): For March 17^th the S&P500 was at 2,529 vs. a 15-year average of 2,030. The signal is that stocks are still too high, so NO  to new stock investments
2. P/E Ratio (Current S&P 500 P/E ratio vs 15-year trend): For March 17^th, the assumed P&E was 19.03 vs. a 15-year average of 23.4. Since the current P/E is lower, this signal says Yes to new stock purchases
3. Dividend yield of S&P500 vs 15-year average: For Feb 2019, the dividend yield was 1.97% vs. a 15-year average of 2.05%, so this signal says No to new stock investments
4. Earnings of S&P500 vs. AAA corporate bond (stock earnings “yield” vs. yield of AAA bonds): For March 17^th, the P/E ratio is 19.03, or the equivalent of a 5.25% yield (1/19.03) vs. a current AAA bond yield of 2.94% – thus the stocks are providing a better earnings yield than AAA corporate bonds. This signal says Yes to new stock purchases.

So we are 50/50 on the potential for new stock purchases. It appears the signal is saying that stocks still may be overpriced, even after a 30%+ sell off.

So what to do? I was originally thinking of changing my new investment allocations and going for a 100% stock purchases for new 401K and brokerage account purchases. Now that I’ve run the numbers, I think I’ll stick with my current allocation, and just go with that.

Also, if you remember, I changed my income account from a 25% stock, 25% REIT and 50% bond allocation to a 50% stock/50% REIT allocation – just in time to get hit with this massive sell off. This decision was a completely emotional decision, not based on a lot of analysis. So I’m not very confident in my ability to make decisions without firm analysis and numbers – my emotions seem to be 100% off.

So I’ll keep my current investment allocations (30% bonds, 17.5% REITs, 52.5% stocks in S&P500, small cap and foreign). I believe the market will recover one we get this Corona/Wuhan Flu out of our system.

Retirement Manifesto: Benefits of a Bear Market

Hopefully you are all weathering the storm alright!

Mr. 39 Months

I have written several times about the potential of timing the market, using a variety of methods. My favorite approach would be the one Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth came up with after the dot.Com blowup in 2000. I even went back and charted how I would have done if I had followed their advice since I had graduated (back in 1986 – yep, I’m an old man).

For a lot of folks, the giant returns of 2019 were a godsend after having suffered a downturn in 2018. It helped plump back up everyone’s retirement accounts and personal savings, and better place them for retiring early. Yet now there is that nagging fear that we’ll have a correction, and we will lose all those wonderful gains that we had. This also raises the specter of “sequence of return risk,” where you retire right as the market tanks (or stays flat for a decade+). So what is a person to do?

I looked at my “market timing” stats for 2019 and 2020 and here is what they said:

1. Price (Current price of S&P500 vs 15 year trend): Jan 2019: No to stocks, Jan 2020: No to stocks
2. P/E Ratio (Current S&P 500 P/E ratio vs 15-year trend): Jan 2019: Yes to stocks, Jan 2020: No to stocks
3. Dividend yield of S&P500 vs 15-year average: Jan 2019: Yes to stocks, Jan 2020: No to stocks
4. Earnings of S&P500 vs. AAA corporate bond (stock earnings “yield” vs. yield of AAA bonds): Jan 2019: Yes to stocks, Jan 2020: Yes to stocks

So in Jan 2019, 3 of the 4 indicators said to purchase stocks, while in Jan 2020, 3 of the 4 are saying invest in bonds. Looks to me like stocks aren’t set up to do great in 2020.

Now remember, these timing stats did not say to sell your stocks/bonds, they just say that for that period, you just concentrate your new purchases on the appropriate category.

As I’ve stated before, I’m a firm believer in the “buy and hold” strategy, keeping with your market allocation, and rebalancing regularly (for me every 6 months) in order to keep your allocation within your guidelines. While some folks may have enjoyed higher returns over a set period of time, this method has met my objectives and allowed me to grow my net worth significantly.

So will there be a correction in 2020? In almost every election year, the market has done OK (with the exception of 2008, when it melted down spectacularly). However, I’ve been growing my net worth at an average of 6.1% per year for the last 14 years – and based on that I would need my investments to lose 9.5% in 2020 in order to maintain that 6.1% growth rate. Take of that, what you will.

My thought is that 2020 will be a “net 0” year, with limited gains in the market. Stocks are overpriced if you look at the metrics above, so it will take them some time for the profits to catch up with the price. My intention is to “stick with the plan” of investing regularly, keeping my allocation, and rebalancing.

What are you plans for 2020?

Mr. 39 Months

As many of you know, I’ve used my father’s inherited IRA to experiment with an income producing method of investing similar to the “old school” way that folks invested their money after retirement. This was laid out in Ben Stein’s book “Yes, you can become a successful income investor.” The idea was to create a method to generate enough income from the portfolio to live off of, without touching the principal (thereby letting it grow).

I detailed in a later post that, for the last 2-1/2 years, the stretch IRA was beating my vanguard allocation. I did note that this took into account the terrible 2018 year, which beat the Vanguard account down more than the income account. Over time, all my reading shows that the Vanguard account would do better – but be more volatile.

For the last three months, the account has not increase that much in value, but it has continued to throw off dividends. Investment value grew $2,194 for the six months (while the market was pretty stagnant), 1.7% (or 6.7% annual growth) while also throwing off $1,256.94 in dividends – the equivalent of 3.75% annual yield.

Not too shabby! Basically, its close to hitting the 4% withdrawal figure, while still growing sufficiently to keep up with inflation. What is interesting is that, while the stocks declined a lot (look at Chevron & Cisco) the other items (REITs,  bonds) helped to cushion the blow.

I’ll continue to monitor and see how this goes.

Mr. 39 Months