TSX 60 Ex-Dividend Date + How I Beat The Market With My Stock Picks

At the beginning of each month, I recap the dividend yield and ex dividend date of the TSX 60. In addition to this recap, I’ve decided to briefly cover the results of my Best 2013 Dividend Stock Book. This book includes 30 stocks analyses (20 US and 10 CDN) for only $2.99. So far, my results are:

20 US Dividend Stocks: +28.76% (beating the index by 7.07%)

10 CDN Dividend Stocks: +13.98% (beating the index by 3.84%)

TSX 60 Ex-Dividend Date

I’m having small problems displaying charts these days, so I’m sharing a “copy/paste” of my excel spreadsheet:

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Best 2013 Dividend Stocks Results

At the beginning of the year, I made a list of Best dividend stocks for 2013 (click on the link to get my metrics and to see the list). Out of this exhaustive list, I pulled out 30 stocks to be my “favorite” picks among those lists. These are not stock recommendations and I strongly suggest you do your own analysis and read the financial statements. This book is simply a compilation of my own stock analysis for 30 stocks either held in my portfolio or appearing on my watch list.

I’ve broken down the result per market:

Best 2013 US Dividend Stocks Results +28.76% and 3.02% Dividend Yield

I’m proud to write that none of my 20 US dividend stock picks for 2013 is showing a negative return… and that I’m beating my benchmark by 7.07% (VIG with 21.69%). On top of this, my portfolio is paying 0.97% more in dividend yield.  My three best picks are Seagate Technology (STX), Walgreen (WAG) and Safeway (SWY).

Overall, I have 12 picks out of 20 (so 60%) that are individually beating my benchmark + Mattel (MAT) which is 0.34% short of beating VIG this year. So my portfolio return is not depending on my 3 best performing stocks. What is interesting is that if I take off my best 3 stocks, I’m still beating my benchmark by 0.54% and if I also take my 3 worst picks, I’m back-up at +2.69% over VIG. This tells you how strong the portfolio is.

**Please note that Heinz (HZN) stock is now in my portfolio as a reference only since it was bought earlier this year. Therefore the stock won’t pay dividends any further.

Best 2013 Canadian Dividend Stocks Results

Last month, good news from Verizon (VZ) informed the industry it won’t pursue the Canadian mobile market for now. Therefore, all telecoms went back up. It was a good thing for my portfolio since I had selected both Telus (T) and Rogers (RCI.B).

This month, the surge on the market came from Canadian banks. The 6 big banks (RY, BMO, CM, NA, TD, BNS) all went up. In 1 month, all banks combined together surged by 5.49%. This is explained by the fact that we didn’t see any Canadian housing bubble burst so far. Therefore, Canadian banks were able to maintain an acceptable level of growth this year.

What if you could follow  a portfolio like this updated monthly?

I’m having fun following my best picks for the year. I’ve been doing this for the past two years and the results are quite surprising. To be honest, I didn’t expect to crush my benchmark like this for 2 years in a row. However, this way of following my portfolio is not optimal.

The thing is the market evolves very fast. I usually make my stock picks in November – December and post the selections in January. I don’t make any further modifications during the year. Therefore, if there is important financial news related to one or many stocks during the year, I can’t adjust my portfolio accordingly. This is the reason why this year’s portfolio still shows Heinz (HNZ) for example. In the real world, I could have sold HNZ several months ago and picked another stock.

This problem is being addressed with my special dividend project. This investing tool will allow me to modify my stock portfolio on a monthly basis and let you know about my trades. If you want to be updated on this project, sign-up here.

Disclaimer: I’m long NA, T, CVX, JNJ, MCD