Portfolio Update

Q2 Portfolio Earnings: What We Know

My July 28 article When to Take Profits in Dividend Stocks highlighted a two-step profit taking strategy for dividend paying stocks:

• Always sell stocks and bonds of any company that’s going the wrong way as a business and is, therefore, vulnerable to a future bear market in stocks morphing into a full-blown recession.
• Consider taking at least partial profits in any stock trading the equivalent of 20 quarterly dividends.

Over the past couple weeks, the entire Lifelong Income Portfolio reported second-quarter numbers and management teams delivered guidance for the rest of the year. That makes now an ideal time to evaluate where each of our recommended companies stands on business strength and value—to ensure they still rate a place in our holdings.

Below, we highlight and analyze in brief the key developments for our 15 stocks and update our advice. We’ll look at the progress of our bond funds in the next issue of Capitalist Times Premium.