Dividends

I received a very nice text message from a subscriber this morning.

I think that if I’m ever in the market for a publicist for Option to Profit, my search need go no further.

His message, in its entirety was “Option to Profit: Come for the premiums, stay for the dividends.”

My guess is that he’s been seeing a stream of dividends coming in lately. Today alone had Lorillard, Weyerhauser and Molson-Coors.

Some of you know that I have mixed feelings about dividends and am not really a big fan.  (I Don’t Understand Dividends and The Myth of Dividends) but as long as there appear to be some pricing inefficiencies in option premiums when dividends are about to be paid (Double Dipping Dividends), why would you want to pass up that opportunity?

I’ve been increasingly putting an emphasis on dividends as market volatility has declined, in order to increase over all yield and I have to admit that I don’t mind receiving those brokerage alerts telling me when a dividend check has been deposited into my account (Dividends? Forget DRIP and Go PRIP).

Because of my belief in attempting to exploit those pricing inefficiencies when they appear is why I send out queries on ex-dividend mornings for those positions that were in the money at the time of going ex-dividend. It’s all about collecting the data and validating the strategy and the information that so many of you regularly provide is very helpful and appreciated.

I’ve been looking for a good way to express the OTP portfolio’s dividend yield for a while but it’s difficult to really get a good fix and one that accurately depicts the reality, especially if seeking to project annual return.

Since I like to compare everything to the S&P 500 Index, it makes sense that I do the same for dividend yield.

Currently the average S&P 500 stock offers a 2.06% dividend yield. However, that is impacted by the 82 stocks in the index that pay no dividends.

So for the 412 dividend paying stocks in the index, the average yield is 2.46%. In 2012 the average dividend paying stock had a 2.7% yield. The current year’s lower yield reflects generally higher stock prices.

If you look at the Weekly Performance spreadsheet you may have noticed for the past two months or so some calculations on each page that assesses dividend yield of open positions and projects that yield on an annual basis.

I had not been planning on saying anything about those spreadsheet scribblings until the end of the year, until having received this morning’s message.

The good news is that with increased data collection the model for creating projections is beginning to resemble reality.

The better news is the reality.

The dividend yield for positions closed in 2012, all 272 of them was 2.9%

Thus far the yield for positions closed in 2013 is 2.7%

Both of those reflect all positions and not just those paying dividends. As a result the gap is 0.7% and in a very favorable direction.

At the moment, not including new purchases this week, the remaining open positions in the OTP portfolio are delivering an annualized dividend yield of 2.9%, again that includes both dividend and non-dividend paying positions.

For those that are a bit more traditional than I am and have long appreciated dividends I finally see your perspective as those account credits have been adding up.