With the end of the year comes the time for me to review my 2024 Portfolio Goals.  Achieving all my goals always ends up being a challenge (I’ve yet to meet every goal in a single year), but maybe this is the year I get it done.  If not, I’ll have more to aspire to in the year ahead.

At the start of 2024, I set 6 Portfolio goals.  These consisted of 3 primary goals and 3 bonus goals.

The primary goals included 1 investment goal and 2 dividend income goals.  The bonus goals included 2 sector weighting goals and a goal for individual stock weighting at the smaller end of my Portfolio.

This past July I posted my Mid-Year Review of 2024 Portfolio Goals, and I was fairly optimistic.  I projected that I’d achieve 2 of my 3 primary goals, and 2 of my 3 bonus goals.  So, meeting 4 of my 6 Portfolio goals was looking like a good possibility.  With respect to the other two goals, one was up in the air, and the other was estimated to fall short.

At that time, I had 6 months left to make adjustments to help myself achieve my goals.  Did I do anything?  Did it help?  Let’s get to the answers.

 

Review of 2024 Portfolio Goals

1) Invest at least $10,000 of new capital in the Portfolio

Short of a $15K investment goal in 2023, a $10K investment goal has been my norm.  I scaled back to $10K in 2024 after that outlier in 2023.

Note – this is a net investment goal, so any Portfolio sales or non-reinvested dividends work against me if I don’t eventually invest them.

By mid-year, I’d invested $5,652.75 of the $10K goal.  Thus, I was a little ahead of the needed pace to reach my goal.

In the second half of the year I slowed down just a bit.  I invested another $4,855.97, bringing my net investment to $10,508.72.

I didn’t achieve the $10K investment goal until mid-December, so I cut it a bit close.

As I mention each year, I have the most control of this goal compared to my others.  Thus, if I was only going to achieve one goal all year, this is the one I’d expect to achieve.  I’m glad I was able to get it done once again.

During 2024, I executed a total of 43 transactions… a few more than last year, but fewer than I’ve had in years prior to that.  The total number of transactions was comprised of 34 purchases and 9 sales.  The 9 sales were a mix of 3 complete sales in which I purged the stock from my Portfolio:  Hormel Foods (HRL), Whirlpool (WHR) and Best Buy (BBY).  The other 6 were trims, 3 of which involved Broadcom (AVGO).

SUMMARY – GOAL MET!

 

2) Reach $21,000 in annual forward dividend income

I began 2024 with annual forward dividend income of $18,578.06 (or ~$1,548.17/mo.).   I’d need to add a single-year record of $2,421.94 in additional forward dividend income over the course of the year to reach my goal.

By mid-year, I’d tallied an increase of $1,138.04, which was ~47% of my goal.  This wasn’t too far off pace, but it left me wondering if I’d reach the goal.

I was ahead of pace from only one source at the halfway point based on my estimates at the start of the year.  That source was Reinvested Dividends.  Dividend Raises and Investment of Capital struggled to keep pace with my estimates, especially Investment of Capital.

Things slightly picked up for Dividend Raises in the 2nd half of the year.  Meanwhile Investment of Capital surged with my investment in my first closed-end fund, DNP Select Income Fund (DNP).

The 2nd half surge allowed me to finish strongly and I barely exceeded my annual forward dividend income goal.  I finished 2024 with a annual forward dividend income of $21,003.31.

My average monthly forward dividend income finished the year at $1,750.28.

I ended up adding $2,425.25 to my forward dividend income in 2024.  That translated to a 13.05% YoY gain.

SUMMARY – GOAL MET!

 

3) Collect $19,750 in actual dividend income

I raked in $17,634.92 in dividend income in 2023.  At the beginning of 2024, I tried to justify a dividend income percentage increase range of 10%-12% for 2024, before picking the top end of that range (12%) for my goal.  This would put my projected dividend total at roughly $19,750 by year’s end.

I set a stretch goal of $20K, as that seemed a close $250 away.  However, that extra $250 meant I’d need YoY growth of 13.41% to reach $20K.

At the halfway point of 2024, I’d received $9,897.80… about 50.1% of my goal.  I was in position to reach my goal, and my stretch goal of $20K was still a possibility.

I improved in the 2nd half of the year and added $9,968.80 of dividend income.

By year’s end, my Portfolio generated $19,866.60 in dividend income.  This exceeded my $19.75K goal by 0.59%, but left me a bit short of my $20K stretch goal.  A nice accomplishment nonetheless.

I added $2,231.68 to my actual dividend income in 2024, resulting in a 12.65% YoY gain in actual dividend income.

SUMMARY – GOAL MET!

 

Bonus Goal #1 – Continue to increase the weighting of Technology in my Portfolio (reduce the weighting difference needed to get in my target range)

I generally try to keep my Portfolio’s sector weightings within +/- 3 percentage points of the S&P 500 sector weightings.  I started 2024 with my Information Technology weighting 11.61 percentage points below that of the S&P 500 Tech sector (17.24% vs. 28.85%).

Over the course of the year, I tried to help myself achieve the goal by adding to my existing Tech holdings.  I increased my positions in Accenture (ACN), Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) and Amdocs Ltd. (DOX).  However, none of my additions were very large.  I only invested $4,886.35 in total… not enough to be significant.

Also, in 2024 a more significant factor was that I’m underweight in the Tech sector and Tech soared.  I suspect this put my Tech weighting further behind as well.

At the midway point of 2024, my Information Technology sector weighting was 20.97%.  Meanwhile the weighting of that sector in the S&P 500 was 32.57%.  Both weightings climbed noticeably, however, the weighting difference declined ever so slightly to an 11.60% deficit… about the minimum amount of progress I could have made.

When 2024 came to a close, my Portfolio’s Information Technology weighting was 20.63%, while the S&P 500 had a weighting of 32.49%… the delta climbed a bit further to 11.86 percentage points.

Even a monster year from my largest Tech holding, Broadcom (AVGO), couldn’t help me reduce that weighting difference.  I’ll keep striving to reduce this Tech weighting difference in 2025.

SUMMARY – GOAL MISSED!

 

Bonus Goal #2 – Continue to decrease the weighting of Industrials in my Portfolio (reduce the weighting difference needed to get in my target range)

I started 2024 with my Industrials weighting 7.93 percentage points above that of the S&P 500 Industrials sector (16.74% vs. 8.81%).

Early in the year, I trimmed my General Dynamics (GD) and Fastenal (FAST) positions just a bit.  This helped reduce the Industrials weighting difference I have.  However, I also added to my Cummins (CMI) position, which hurt.

At the midway point of 2024, my Industrials weighting difference had shrunk to 7.08 percentage points (15.25% vs. 8.17%).  Look at that… progress!

Six months later, by the end of 2024, things weren’t much different.  My Portfolio’s Industrials weighting was 15.29%, while the S&P 500 had a weighting of 8.16%.  This made the weighting difference a slightly greater 7.13 percentage points, but lower than what I had to start the year.  The weighting reduction was 0.80 percentage points for 2024.  I’ll take it!

SUMMARY – GOAL MET!

 

Bonus Goal #3 – Cut in half  (at least) the number of stocks that don’t have a 0.5% value weighting within my Portfolio

This goal was something new for 2024.  In past posts, I’ve mentioned that I’d like each of my Portfolio holdings to have at least a 1% value weighting.  At the start of 2024, there were 24 stocks that didn’t meet that criteria (out of 59 stocks).

It was going to be nearly impossible to get each of those to have a weighting north of 1% in 2024.  So, I thought I’d try to increase the size of the handful of stocks that fail to even meet a 0.5% value weighting.  There were only 6 stocks that small to begin the year.

Getting a 0.5% minimum weighting could be addressed by: 1) investing enough new capital into these 6 holdings to get them over the 0.5% weighting threshold, 2) using any sale/trim proceeds of other holdings to buy more shares in these positions, 3) eliminating the stock from my Portfolio altogether, or 4) just having the individual stock outperform the rest of my Portfolio.

Regardless of how it gets done, I hoped to have 3 or less stocks with such a small Portfolio weighting by the end of 2024 in order to meet the goal.

At mid-year, I’d already knocked down the list of 6 stocks to 2.  I was confident I’d be meeting this goal.  However, I didn’t make it, as I ended the year with 4 stocks shy of the 0.5% weighting.

Here were the 6 small holdings that failed to hold at least a 0.5% value weighting in my Portfolio at the start of 2024:

• VICI Properties (VICI) – 0.499% (almost there!)
• UGI Corp (UGI) – 0.498% (close too!)
• McCormick & Co. (MKC) – 0.420%
• NNN REIT (NNN) – 0.405%
• Walt Disney Co. (DIS) – 0.399%
• Whirlpool (WHR) – 0.283%

At the end of 2024, here’s the new list… 4 holdings now:

• American Tower (AMT) – 0.486%
• NNN REIT (NNN) – 0.467%
• Chevron (CVX) – 0.462%
• McCormick & Co. (MKC) – 0.460%

Each of the 4 stocks that failed to reach the 0.5% weighting ended up very close to that number – even the worst was at 0.46%.

AMT dropped onto the list, despite a small purchase during the year, due to its poor price performance in 2024.  NNN and MKC stayed on the list despite some additional investment.  CVX was added to my Portfolio late in the year, and I didn’t buy enough to get it to the 0.5% weighting.  VICI eclipsed a 0.5% weighting thanks to a large enough purchase during the year.  UGI and DIS had both purchases and price appreciation to help them reach the 0.5% weighting.  WHR was eliminated from my Portfolio due to price and dividend issues, so its weighting became irrelevant.

SUMMARY – GOAL MISSED!

 

Summary

2024 was another good year for my Portfolio.  Its value was up and my dividends grew nicely.  I purged some laggards and added some new hopefuls.

Overall, goal achievement was good.  I met each of my 3 primary goals, but only managed to meet 1 of the 3 bonus goals.

With regard to the bonus goals, I failed to reduce the Information Technology sector weighting difference in my Portfolio, and failed to reduce the number of stocks with less than a 0.5% weighting to a sufficient level.  At least I reduced the Industrials sector weighting difference I had… more work to do next year though.

Once again, achieving a clean sweep of my Portfolio goals was outside of my grasp.  Still, I did manage to achieve 4 of my 6 Portfolio goals, including all the primary ones.  It’s hard to get disappointed about that.

My 2025 goals should be posted in the coming week, so keep your eyes open for that.

 

Did you set portfolio goals for 2024?  What level of success did you find in achieving them?  I look forward to your comments.