Howdy, everyone! I’ve got another quick post to let you know about a Portfolio transaction I made today… the last trading day of July.
I continued to build out a position I started late last year. In less than 8 months the position has grown quite a bit… although it does still remain in the bottom half of my Portfolio based on value.
Looking at this latest purchase from one angle, it’s 10 times bigger than my Lockheed Martin (LMT) purchase from earlier in the week. Well, 10x more shares, not 10x the investment. It sounded impressive though, didn’t it?
In any case, I continue to add to my Portfolio, which adds to my forward dividend income and keeps me on a path to meet many of the dividend-based goals I set at the beginning of the year.
How about we check out all the details right now…
Merck & Co. (MRK)
I added to pharmaceutical giant, MRK. Healthcare stocks appear to be offering some value these days, so I’ll keep going to the well in this sector if that’s where the value lies.
MRK released their quarterly earnings this week. The stock took a minor dip as a result (about -2%). The company beat on revenue, but came up shy a few cents per share with respect to earnings.
The stock price of MRK had been trending up some after completing the spinoff of Organon & Co. (OGN) in early June.
Anyway, with the price dip, I decided to boost my position a bit. It was roughly a 10% adder.
On 7/30/21, I bought 10 shares at $76.95 for a total of $769.50. The stock yielded 3.38% at my purchase price (over 1% percent greater than my current Portfolio average).
I now own 111.43 shares of MRK. The share addition bumped up my cost basis ever so slightly to $74.08/share.
This purchase boosted my annual forward dividend income by $26.00. I should start to see the impact of the additional income with MRK’s October dividend payment.
With MRK already a part of my Portfolio prior to this purchase, the number of stocks in my Portfolio remained at 54.
MRK has become the 30th largest position in my Portfolio with a value of $8,565.62. This puts MRK noticeably behind CVS Health (CVS) in my Portfolio rankings, but just ahead of 3M Co. (MMM).
Summary
Of all my Portfolio sectors, I receive the largest amount of annual dividends from the Healthcare sector. This purchase only solidified that.
From my perspective, values can be found in several Healthcare names right now, and I chose to add to one of them in MRK.
The purchase resulted in a net investment of $769.50 into my Portfolio. In addition, my forward dividend income increased by exactly $26.
Have you beefed up any of your Healthcare positions in recent months? If so, what have you been adding to? Please share in the comments!
Hi….I have been following you for some time now. We think alike with the choices of stocks you have been adding. I own Merck and have been adding (own 250 shares). I also own PFE but wont add cause i own alot of shares at a very low cost. I will just wait to see what this happens because of the Delta spreading rapidly. Not sure of a possible correction cause the market is at a high valuation now. Let”s see what what happens. Have a great day. Joseph
Hi Joseph. I’m happy to hear that you’ve been following along all this time. It’s great to have long-time visitors/readers.
You’ve grown your MRK position very nicely. It’s over twice as big as my MRK position… nice work. Sounds like you have a hefty PFE position, too. Between the two of them, you’ve got a nice 3.5% yield.
I suspect both stocks would hold up well in a market downturn, but as you noted, let’s see what happens.
Thanks for stopping in and sharing your thoughts.