Historically, I've thought of the last quarter of the year as the time to buy my favorite dividend stocks...though having searched back, I cannot find much formal evidence of this (a recurring - and not-so-reassuring - theme). So let's fix that.
Welcome to the first edition of the The Fourth Quarter Dividend.
This month I will choose from the "16"s of my portfolio. (Meaning, each of these stocks are roughly target allocated for 16% of my total portfolio.) The candidate stocks are:
Amazon (AMZN)
Apple (AAPL)
NVIDIA (NVDA)
Tesla (TSLA)
AMZN and TSLA can be eliminated from consideration right away: neither pays a dividend.
Now let's compare the remaining two candidates.
AAPL: 1.3% dividend yield, 24% payout ratio, $255.3B revenue, 17% revenue growth, $73.0B operating cash flow, $41.4B free cash flow
NVDA: 0.2% dividend yield, 9% payout ratio, $11.9B revenue, 40% revenue growth, $4.9B operating cash flow, $2.5B free cash flow
As you can see, this is not a particularly close contest. Apple is one of the safest, most well-funded dividend stocks in the market, perhaps ever. It will almost certainly increase payouts year-over-year for the foreseeable future.
Here's my current portfolio (buy and hold). As always, I believe in all of these stocks - until I sell them.
Amazon (AMZN) 15.22%
Apple (AAPL) 15.09%
NVIDIA (NVDA) 14.79%
Tesla (TSLA) 11.11%
Alphabet (GOOGL) 6.61%
Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) 4.26%
Facebook (FB) 4.07%
Microsoft (MSFT) 3.04%
Adobe Systems (ADBE) 2.67%
Nike (NKE) 2.29%
Salesforce.com (CRM) 2.27%
Visa (V) 1.87%
UnitedHealth Group (UNH) 1.80%
Intel (INTC) 1.59%
Waste Management (WM) 1.52%
Starbucks (SBUX) 1.35%
Costco Wholesale (COST) 1.34%
Chubb Limited (CB) 1.27%
BlackRock (BLK) 1.27%
Booking Holdings (BKNG) 1.25%
Autodesk (ADSK) 0.91%
Activision Blizzard (ATVI) 0.59%
Comcast (CMCSA) 0.58%
American Water Works (AWK) 0.53%
Norfolk Southern (NSC) 0.51%
CSX (CSX) 0.50%
Union Pacific (UNP) 0.46%
Aqua America (WTR) 0.44%
Canadian National Railway (CNI) 0.43%
Kansas City Southern (KSU) 0.34%
