Best 2014 Dividend stocks Returns & TSX60 Ex Dividend Date

I’m taking a quick pause in my new investing series about how to build an investment strategy (read part 1 and part2) to publish my stock pick returns as at March 31^st and the usual TSX60 dividend yield and ex-dividend date chart. After a full quarter, I’m already taking a step ahead of both US and CDN benchmarks. Let’s check how I beat both benchmarks by more than 1%.

PSST! If you are curious to know how I keep beating the market with dividend stocks for the past 3 years, check out my new website!

Best 2014 Dividend Stock Pick Returns

I started this “tradition” on my blog in 2012. The goal is to pick 20 US and 10 CDN dividend stocks that I think will outperform their peers. This is the reason why I use VIG and XDV as benchmarks. I keep track of my results for accountability purposes. I find that too many analysts and blogs just drop the ball on their picks when they are not so great. By posting monthly results, I have no other choice but to face my performance and explain it. You can look at my previous picks and returns:

Best Dividend Stock Picks 2012 (-1.47% vs VIG (US dividend ETF), + 8.32% vs XDV (CDN dividend ETF)

Best Dividend Stock Picks 2013 (+11.07% vs VIG, + 0.77% vs XDV)

You can also buy my 2014 Best Dividend Stock Picks for Kindle ( on Amazon) to get the full analysis:

2014 Best US Dividend Stocks: +2.76% vs -0.01% (VIG)

13 stocks out of 20 beat my benchmark. This is a 65% ratio… not bad, but not incredible either. However, I have 4 stocks (ALF, APPL, XOM, WMT) that could easily come back to life with some good news. After a quarter, I’m adding almost 3% to the benchmark which is a pretty solid performance.  My portfolio dividend yield is also 1% higher than VIG.

What I can see is that consumer (staple or discretionary) stocks like Clorox (CLX), Mattel (MAT), Philip Morris (PM) and Wal-Mart (WMT) have had a rough start this year. In fact, if I look closer at my portfolio, I can also add that PepsiCo (PEP), McDonald’s (MCD), Hasbro (HAS) are beating the benchmark, but lagging the overall stock market. They show a YTD performance of 0.68%, 1.03% and 1.11% respectively.

It’s only normal that dividend stocks lag a bull market. Last year, dividend stocks were almost entering bubble territory since the market was hungry for revenue. The year-end results weren’t as high as expected by the market and this is why dividend stocks were penalized more than other stocks. Nonetheless, the overall return including dividends is still pretty good, even compared to the global market.

2014 Best CDN Dividend Stocks: +2.66% vs 1.23% (XDV)

I’m offering another solid performance in the Canadian market by adding 1.43% in value to the benchmark. For this portfolio, only 50% of my stocks beat the benchmark. This is not exactly a good batting average as this could have resulted in lagging behind the index. I was *lucky* to pick Black Diamond Group (BDI) and Gluskin Sheff (GS) boosting my results through the roof with a +14.16% and +24.23% YTD performance.

I was expecting a more solid performance from Chorus that is evolving in a profitable market and shows strong fundamentals. Banks (BNS and RY) are not rising quickly during the first quarter and ScotiaBank has been hit by bad results from its Latin American branch results. I made another bet on consumers again with Dorel (DII.B) and North West Company (NWC) but they are also lagging due to deceiving results. Lassonde (LAS.A) is saving the consumer group with a good performance so far… but the dividend yield is anemic.

Still, I was able to beat both benchmarks after three months and looking forward to the next quarter with enthusiasm!

TSX60 Ex-Dividend Date & Dividend Yield

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