December Dividend Stock Watch List

Well, I just finished plowing my driveway, and I definitely had to, in order to even be able to pull into my driveway. We didn’t have really any snow until last night, let’s just say winter has come by with a roaring hello! As the coffee is brewing and I am setting up my organized area to focus on writing, the stock watch list has come to mind. I have been monitoring high quality dividend stocks since the election and I am currently making my list and checking it twice, trying to find out which stocks on my watch list are naughty or nice. Come on in and check them out!

The watch list stocks

Even though I’m recently coming off of a topic about maximizing my tax-advantaged accounts, which are primarily made up of mutual funds, I always will have a high priority to individual dividend stocks and will always have my watch list! Bert has found out that your goals are there and you can always leap over them like he has been doing, and to have the right watch list helps focus your attention on the assets to put on your balance sheet. Comparing my current watch list to November’s, it has had a complete turnover, which is hilarious! But enough of this, let’s see who is on my radar!

1.) Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) – Even though I own almost 42 shares of this beast of a dividend aristocrat, their share price has moved downward lately.  Over the last month they are down almost 7% in share price, which of course, bumps their yield up. On Friday’s, December 9th, close-price, JNJ was $112.26.  The average analyst earnings expectation for next year per yahoo.com finance is $7.14 per share.  Based on this, their price to earnings (p/e) ratio is only 15.72; far below the S&P 500 and below where they have traditionally been over the better part of a year or two. Their dividend is $3.20/annually, which computes to a 2.85% yield and a 45% payout ratio based on forward earnings expectations. They are closely approximating their 5 year dividend yield on average and JNJ has been one of the more reliable aristocrats as of late, given their 6.67% increase this year, which is right on par with their average dividend growth rate. Most readers know that I call JNJ, good “old reliable” when it comes to increasing their dividend and at the growth rate that they will typically announce the increase. Ah, always so easy to find out why JNJ is a top 5 foundation stock for those that want a dividend portfolio, or even any portfolio, for that matter. These guys are strong on my watch list as they fit the metrics on the Dividend Diplomat Stock Screener.