Higher Yield

As the twenty something readers of my blog know, I have been focusing my portfolio on MFI stocks that yield more than 2.5%. This is based on my study of the top 50 MFI stocks every month since January 2006. That study shows that the following strategies would have given you the following gain/(loss) on a $100,000 investment spread over the first 12 months:

1. Just straight up Magic Formula: $109,042
   
2. Just Straight up Russell 3000: $101,687
   
3. Buying stocks new to the list in past year: $109,720
   
4. Buying MFI stocks with yields>2.5%: $191,518
   

Based upon this, I thought it might be useful for me to start posting my current holdings along with their yields. I show the yields in two ways,

1. what they are currently and
2. what they were based upon the price of stock when I bought it.

My intent is to be holding the higher yielding stocks longer than the year window. I haven't yet decided what my "sell" signal will be. I am reinvesting the dividends in additional shares, planning for "retirement" income.

Note my portfolio has really become bifurcated into steady, lower risk dividend stocks and high risk Chinese companies. When you look at my stock list below, FLL is really the only stock that fits neither camp.

Here are the current holdings:

Symbol	Initial Price	Current Price	Avg of Gain	Avg of IWV Gain	Yield
CCME	$10.31	$16.20	60.2%	6.1%	0.0%
CEL	$26.61	$32.33	24.7%	8.8%	10.0%
CEU	$4.61	$5.55	20.4%	1.1%	0.0%
CHKE	$18.09	$18.73	7.0%	9.5%	8.1%
CMFO	$5.07	$6.36	27.0%	7.6%	0.0%
CMTL	$26.66	$29.71	11.4%	2.8%	3.4%
EESC	$2.60	$2.20	-15.4%	6.7%	0.0%
FLL	$3.15	$3.58	13.7%	6.2%	0.0%
INTC	$19.12	$19.32	1.0%	2.2%	3.3%
KSW	$3.48	$3.20	-5.0%	9.6%	3.1%
MAIL	$6.08	$5.97	3.1%	3.5%	7.5%
NEWN	$6.74	$6.13	-7.8%	1.6%	0.0%
PETS	$16.36	$15.96	-2.5%	0.1%	3.1%
PM	$44.35	$58.54	34.8%	8.0%	4.4%
RAI	$53.55	$61.77	20.4%	3.5%	6.3%
TTT	$9.60	$14.82	58.3%	18.6%	1.7%
UNTD	$5.78	$6.00	6.0%	11.2%	6.7%
UTA	$5.33	$4.87	2.1%	6.9%	0.0%
VALU	$14.70	$14.20	-2.0%	10.2%	5.6%
Grand Total			16.7%	5.9%	2.7%

RAI Boosts Dividend

Speaking of my higher yielding stocks, I did get good news from RAI (Reynolds American announces 8.9% dividend increase from $0.45 to $0.49; two-for-one stock split and 2011 retirement of CEO Ivey). The stock was up 3% on the news and has been a real solid part of my portfolio.

As you can see from above, RAI is up 20.4% vs 3.4% for the index. My other "sin" stock, PM (which raised their dividend last quarter) is up 34.8%!.