And so it begins

FiveTwenty chronicles the journey to build a dividend income portfolio. The portfolio is built by periodic investment of new capital and paid out dividends over a period of 5 years. The 5 year period starts Jan 1, 2021 and ends Dec 31, 2025.

The strategy we follow to build and measure the performance of the portfolio is outlined in the remainder of this post. You can always find an up to date version on the Strategy page. Furthermore we will announce any updates to the strategy in a standalone post.

Selection

For us to consider initiating or expanding a position in the FiveTwenty portfolio, a company must meet the minimal entry criteria:

  • raised dividends for 25 consecutive years
  • Yield >= 2.5%
  • PE <= 20
  • Payout ratio <= 60%

In addition to the minimal entry criteria, we use the following portfolio diversification rules to guide the build:

  • If the portfolio does not have at least 20 open positions, then we cannot add to an existing position. However, we make an exception to this rule if no company outside the portfolio meets the minimal entry criteria.
  • If no company, outside or inside the portfolio, meets the minimal entry criteria then we can add to an existing position.
  • If a company cuts its dividend, then we will evaluate if it warrants closing the position.

Finally, we analyze company fundamentals of companies that pass our screening criteria to select the ones to add to the FiveTwenty portfolio.

Mechanics

Every Wednesday, we establish a new position or add to an existing position. (The entire weekly amount to be invested, is allocated to a single stock.) We use $2,000 of new capital plus any dividends paid out in the previous week to fund the purchase.

If we make a decision to close out a position, we close out the position on the first Wednesday following the decision. We re-invest the proceeds of the sale back into the portfolio. In order to avoid over-indexing into a single position, we split the amount into $2,000 chunks and add them to the weekly investment capital until the entire amount has been re-invested.

Before submitting the purchase/sale order(s), we announce the stock selected for the weekly purchase and any other changes to the portfolio on the blog.

Benchmark

To quantify the effort put into building the FiveTwenty portfolio, we benchmark the portfolio against the easy-peasy portfolio. Easy-peasy consists of a single position: VT. Additionally, easy-peasy has automated dividend reinvestment turned on. Finally, we build easy-peasy over time by investing $2,000 of new capital every weekly over the same period as the FiveTwenty portfolio.

Benchmarking dimensions:

  • total value (aka balance)
  • most recent quarterly dividend payout
  • lifetime dividend payout

Expectations

As January 2021 rolls around US equites have been a 10+ years long bull market. All major US indices are near their record high. COVID-19 is still having an outsized impact on our society and economy. It is quite likely that the US will see a significant market correction and a recession during the 5 year period of the FiveTwenty experiment. The experiment is neither a bet that stock prices will continue their great bull run, nor that they experience a major decline. It is instead a bet that investing in solid dividend paying companies for the long term will yield good returns irrespective of the economic cycle.

With that backdrop in mind here is the quarterly dividend milestones we aim to achieve:

Total Capital InvestedQuarterly Dividend
2021Q1$ 26 000$ 114
Q2$ 52 000$ 342
Q3$ 78 000$ 570
Q4$ 104 000$ 798
2022Q1$ 130 000$ 1079
Q2$ 156 000$ 1307
Q3$ 182 000$ 1535
Q4$ 208 000$ 1763
2023Q1$ 234 000$ 2101
Q2$ 260 000$ 2329
Q3$ 286 000$ 2557
Q4$ 312 000$ 2785
2024Q1$ 338 000$ 3185
Q2$ 364 000$ 3413
Q3$ 390 000$ 3641
Q4$ 416 000$ 3869
2025Q1$ 442 000$ 4334
Q2$ 468 000$ 4562
Q3$ 494 000$ 4790
Q4$520 000$ 5018
The following assumptions went into computing the table above: starting yield of 3.5%, yearly dividend growth of 6%, only half of invested capital collects a dividend for its initial quarter, all capital that was invested at the end of the year receives the 6% bump in dividend for all quarters of the following year.