2024 Year End Review & Dividends - 3rd slowest increase in cash dividends since 2011

Although 2024 started off as a year where investors were anticipating whether rate cuts would happen (rate cuts eventually happened on 18 September 2024), it would be remembered as the year Donald Trump made an incredible historic comeback and was elected the 47th president of the United States. As a result of Trump's comeback, the market has priced in an inflationary environment, with rate cuts projected to slow down. With this being factored in, Reits got sold down while banks stocks went up. 

Although my portfolio went briefly into the red in 2nd quarter of the year, it bounced up and is now green, mainly our local bank stocks and ST Engineering. Reits continue to weigh down on my portfolio since I had been buying mainly Reits since 2023, anticipating rate cuts in 2024. While rate cuts did happen, Trump comeback played a bigger role in Reits underperformance. 

Click image to enlarge. Some stats are from stockcafe

For the year of 2024, I have collected $19,566.60 of cash dividends (or $1,630.55 per month), just a 4.2% increase from last year. This is my 3rd slowest increase in cash dividends, partly attributed to my strategy of buying mostly Reits in 2024 and opting for scrip units as dividends instead of cash. 

In terms of total dividends collected since I started this journey, I have collected $97,615.85. I can't wait to break the $20,000 dividends per year milestone next year. 

This year I made a total of 13 transactions. All 13 transactions were buy/add/scrip/preferential offering transactions. In fact, only 6 transactions were buy transactions where I dipped into my wachest. The remaining 7 transactions were all due to corporate action such as scrip dividends and preferential offering. This is also the first time where I did not make any sell transaction in a year. 

Wonder if I should start worrying about the lack of sell transactions since it meant I did not rebalance portfolio or take profit. 

For 2025, I will make a more active effort to look at and add on both Reits and Non-Reits since it is going to be hard to forsee what Trump will and can actually do. He may have gotten a strong mandate, but we can expect his own party members to start opposing some of the policies he push up for approval.

As always, this update excludes Singapore Savings Bonds, T-bills and Foreign Stocks.