Portfolio Update: Aflac, Kellogg And Deere

I have made a few changes to my stock portfolio.

I sold Deere a while back, about two days after I wrote a post about not knowing that to do with it. It did not raise its dividend this year. I decided I am going to stick to my rules.

I also bought about 50 or so shares of Aflac. I now have about 103. When I stared buying dividend stocks, I just bought as many shares as I could get for $1000. Before too long I changed my mind and I then went for 50 shares of each stock. Now I want to get to 100. (I don’t know what I will do about stocks that split.) I still have only 13 shares of 3M and 15 of Air Products.

Aflac has a P/E ratio of 9.5 or so. A lot of stocks have pretty high P/E ratios. I am going to start out my maxing out on the stocks that are lower than average at the moment. I think the historical average for the S & P 500 is 16. The webmaster of Dividend Growth Investor will not buy a stock with a P/E over 20. I wonder why he/she is willing to go a bit higher than the historical average.

I also bought 100 shares of Kellogg. Maybe it was not a great idea to buy a new stock when I still have a lot under 50 shares, but the P/E ratio is 12.96 (right now), and I wanted to get more into the food/water/land sectors.

I don’t know if I bought Aflac in time to get a dividend payment for all 100 shares. I intend to hold these stocks for a while, or at least as long as they make their payments. I honestly do not pay too much attention to the ex-dividend date or the date of record too much. Yes, I want to make as much as I can, but I have held Aflac for four years. Missing out on one payout is not the end of the world. When I bought 50 more shares of Exxon I missed the cutoff date.

Images from Aflac website and Kellogg website, assumed allowed under Fair Use

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