Re-examine our $115k dividend stock transactions in 2020

Back in January, I reviewed our 2020 dividend stock transactions and determined the winners and losers of our trades. I disclosed our average cost basis and the good and bad moves we made throughout last year.

2020 was an extremely weird year. The stock indices were firing on all cylinders in mid-February. Then the COVID-19 pandemic created a lot of uncertainties and quickly caused the global stock market to crash and hit the bottom in mid-March. Rather than a prolonged bear market, which many people had believed and feared, the global market recovered quickly and eventually went above the record highs of mid-February 2020. 

Would anyone have predicted such a market response last March when there were so many unknowns and lockdowns because of the pandemic? 

Probably not.  

It just shows that at best, even the financial analysts and stock gurus are only right 50% of the time. Therefore, it is important to ignore the herd and separate your emotions from investing. Time in the market is far more important than timing the market. 

Investing is a continuous learning process for me. There’s no way I will ever finish learning about all the investing-related topics. So as a learning process, I decided to re-examine our $115k dividend stock transactions in 2020 and go over lessons I have learned.

Dividend Stocks Sales

For the most part, once we purchase a dividend stock, we usually hold it forever, continue to add more shares as we see fit, and enroll in DRIP whenever we are eligible. However, there are times that we may sell dividend paying stocks because one of the following reasons:

1. The stock price has stayed flat for the last few years
2. No dividend increase or minimum payout increase
3. Dividend cuts or suspensions
4. Dividend cuts or suspensions are anticipated because of deteriorating revenues

We closed out the following positions throughout 2020:

Ticker	Name	Cost Price	Sold Price	Market Price	Sold & Market Price Delta
D.UN	Dream Office REIT	$ 23.10	$32.94	$22.18	-48.5%
ET.TO	Evertz Technologies	$ 16.93	$17.84	$13.23	-34.8%
CVX	Chevron	$ 108.03	$121.03	$101.96	-18.7%
GIS	General Mills	$ 50.97	$52.87	$59.84	11.6%
UFS.TO	Domtar Corp	$ 55.17	$43.72	$68.56	36.2%
Ventas	VTR	$ 66.42	$27.84	$57.09	51.2%
MAL.TO	Magellan Aerospace Corp	$ 20.60	$7.78	$10.16	23.4%
LB.TO	Laurentian Bank	$ 46.67	$29.50	$42.68	30.9%
XTC.TO	Exco Technologies	$ 12.38	$6.99	$10.21	31.5%
PSK.TO	PrairieSky Royalty Ltd.	$ 24.94	$4.96	$13.84	64.2%

We closed out all the positions listed above, except for Dream Office. It was tough mentally selling the likes of Domtar, Ventas, Magellan Aerospace, Laurentian, Exco, and PrairieSky and taking significant losses. But given these companies either cut their dividends or were expecting to cut dividends, we believed it would have been better to invest the money elsewhere. 

In highlight, we should have just closed out Dream Office when it was at its 5-year high in early 2020. Given the current working from home environment, I do not see Dream Office stock price going above $30 any time soon. If we had held on to Domtar, Ventas, Magellan, Laurentian, Exco, and PrairieSky, we would have recovered some money by now, but we would still be below our average cost basis (except for Domtar). 

Overall, I think we made the right decision by selling these dividend stocks and reinvesting the money elsewhere. The sales resulted in about $28,000 cash that allowed us to buy other better growth and profitability dividend paying stocks. 

Dividend Stock Purchases

Like other years, we maxed out our TFSAs and RRSPs in 2020. Once we maxed out the registered accounts, we contributed to our taxable accounts. 

We maxed out our TFSA contribution rooms in early January and purchased stocks throughout January and February. We also contributed a large amount of cash to our RRSPs in Q1, 2020. This meant we purchased some stocks at relatively high prices compared to the rest of 2020. 

When the stock market tumbled in March, we moved a lot of money from our Long Term Savings for Spending (LTTS) account to take advantage of the discounted stock prices. Our savings rates were higher than usual between March to June due to staying home, which allowed us to invest more money and take advantage of the volatile market.

Below are our purchases in 2020:

Ticker	Shares	Cost Price	Market Price	Gain/Loss	Market vs. Cost Delta
AQN.TO	378	$19.16	$19.54	$143.64	1.9%
BEP	100	$45.85	$38.44	-$741.00	-19.3%
BMO.TO	57	$77.63	$128.73	$2,912.70	39.7%
BNS.TO	102	$53.26	$80.97	$2,826.42	34.2%
BPY	393	$16.59	$18.59	$786.00	10.8%
CM.TO	116	$75.62	$149.13	$8,527.16	49.3%
CNR.TO	12	$118.29	$134.50	$194.52	12.1%
CU.TO	43	$32.40	$35.76	$144.48	9.4%
ENB.TO	374	$38.72	$49.05	$3,863.42	21.1%
ERE.UN	450	$4.69	$4.64	-$22.50	-1.1%
GRT.UN	27	$67.11	$89.19	$596.16	24.8%
IPL.TO	453	$22.53	$19.95	-$1,168.74	-12.9%
NA.TO	50	$65.54	$96.74	$1,560.00	32.3%
PEP	20	$135.94	$156.52	$411.60	13.1%
RY.TO	26	$84.60	$131.06	$1,207.96	35.4%
SRU.TO	121	$31.83	$30.43	-$169.40	-4.6%
SU.TO	118	$30.63	$24.02	-$779.98	-27.5%
TD.TO	320	$63.11	$86.12	$7,363.20	26.7%
VCN.TO	16	$32.13	$41.50	$149.92	22.6%
XAW.TO	612	$28.25	$34.70	$3,947.40	18.6%

Before we go further, there are few things to point out:

1. We closed out BPY, IPL.TO, and VCN.TO entirely in early 2021. We also sold most of our SU.TO shares in 2021.
2. We closed out BPY because Brookfield Asset Management decided to acquire 100% of BPY units. We decided to not wait for the cash or BAM shares. So we sold everything and reinvested the cash elsewhere.
3. I lost confidence in Inter Pipeline’s board and management after several companies had tried to acquire them. Although the IPL.TO’s share price was underpriced due to the Heartland project, I made the tough decision to move on.
4. Since we hold many of the top 10 holdings of VCN.TO, we decided to close out VCN earlier this year and used that money to buy XAW.TO instead. 

At the time of writing, our 2020 purchases are up by almost $32,000, or about 26%. The return would have been higher if not for the poor performance in the renewable sector so far this year and dragged down the share price of AQN.TO and BEP. 

We would have done a lot better if we simply went all-in on the Canadian banks and not purchased the likes of Inter Pipeline and Suncor. But hindsight is always 20-20 right? Furthermore, the IPL and SU purchases were made at the beginning of 2020, before COVID-19. Who knew the oil and gas sector would get turned upside down by the pandemic?

Four Investing Lessons Learned

As a DIY investor that invests in both dividend paying and index ETFs, last year provided me with many valuable lessons. I am really glad that we went through a major downturn while we are still in the accumulating phase of our financial independence journey. Things could have been very different if we were living off dividends. Below are some lessons I have learned.

1. Be greedy when others are fearful

The famous Warren Buffett quote really resonated last year when things looked very bleak. When people were worried the sky was falling, and the market was down by 15% or more each day, we decided the market downturn was an excellent purchase opportunity. We took a calculated risk by using our long-term savings for international travels to buy stock and index ETFs and believed that in the long term, the market would recover and go higher. 

After less than a year, we had been rewarded handsomely. Sure, we didn’t time the market perfectly but at a 25% return, that ain’t too shabby!

2. Believe in the Canadian banks

Canadian banks are one of the better managed financial institutions in the world. The Big Five Canadian banks have been paying uninterrupted dividends since the late 1800s. During the financial crisis, although the Big Five didn’t raise dividends, they continued with the same dividend payouts. The same couldn’t be said for their American counterparts like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

In the midst of the financial crisis, one day during the daily water cooler chat, my ex-manager mentioned that he planned to sell a bunch of losing stocks and buy $150k worth of Royal Bank, TD, and Bank of Montreal shares. At the time, he thought the Canadian banks were greatly undervalued. He also thought that there was no way the Canadian government would let any of the Canadian banks go under. I thought he was gambling at the time and didn’t take the same action like him. Looking back, the financial crisis provided an excellent buying opportunity for Canadian banks and many solid dividend paying stocks. 

I took this lesson to heart and decided to buy a lot of Canadian bank shares last year during the downturn. I believed in the likes of Royal Bank, TD, Bank of Montreal, Bank of Nova Scotia, CIBC, and National Bank. I was convinced that all of them would come out of the pandemic just fine, if not stronger than before. At first, I was a bit worried that some of them would cut dividends. Loaded with cash, the Canadian banks set aside a lot of money in case of any loan losses. As it turned out, there weren’t as many loan defaults as anticipated. So major Canadian banks have been reporting expectation-beating quarters. The analysts now expect the Canadian banks to raise dividend payout by 13% on average when the regulator gives the OK. 

I can’t say that all of our Canadian bank purchases turned out well for us. Our purchase of Laurentian Bank didn’t work out. We purchased Laurentian Bank before 2020 and we were too focused on the dividend income and dividend growth streak. What we should have done was look at Laurentian Bank’s entire operation and the fact that a smaller regionalized bank wouldn’t have as much buffer and flexibility compared to its bigger counterparts. Laurentian Bank also faced a lot of operational challenges and the warnings were well written. I should have been more careful about these warning signs. 

Overall, the six big Canadian banks remain solid investments. Many retirement funds invest in these banks. So, it would be a national disaster if any of these banks were to go bankrupt or suspend their dividends entirely. 

3. Don’t get too attracted to high yield stocks

We lost a lot of money with Inter Pipeline. As mentioned in my original review, we added Inter Pipeline at the beginning of 2020 purely because of the around 8% dividend yield at the time. I knew the company’s debt level was high, but I thought that the dividend payout was sustainable. 

Then COVID-19 was declared as a global pandemic, people stayed home to protect themselves, crude oil price tanked, and Inter Pipeline’s cash flow was dramatically reduced as a result. This led to the dividend cut. 

Like many investors, I thought Suncor’s dividend payout was solid and Suncor would never consider cutting its dividends and lose its highly desirable dividend increase streak. 

Boy, was I ever wrong!

Rather than getting too attracted to high-yield stocks, I should have purchased stocks with a lower payout ratio and healthier free cash flow. 

An important lesson learned here!

4. Focus on long term

The most important lesson I learned is to focus on the long term and ignore the short term volatility and noises. The broad stock market has a historical return of 8%. But you can’t get that long term return if you sell all your stocks or index ETFs due to a knee-jerking reaction. 

This is why I believe investors should only invest with money that you do not need for at least the next three years (longer if possible).

Remember, a paper loss isn’t the same as a real loss!

Summary – Re-examine our $115k dividend stock transactions in 2020

We invested a larger than usual amount of money in 2020 and it paid off for us well. Hopefully these purchases will expedite our financial independence journey. 

Market timing would have worked well if we could predict the future. Since we can’t predict the future, the best thing to do is to continue to create a large savings gap, invest the money saved, and continue to buy more dividend paying stocks and index ETFs. This is even more important to take advantage of any market downturns and purchase things at a discount. 

Looking back, I think we made mostly the right selling and purchasing decisions. Obviously, we didn’t get everything right and made some incorrect decisions. But we have an above 50% batting average, which is pretty good in my books. 

For most investors, to keep things simple, it is probably best to stick with a broad market index ETF like VEQT, or XEQT. If you want to have some exposures in both stocks and bonds, one of the all-in-one ETFs is a great choice. Develop a core investment strategy and don’t switch back and forth between different investing strategies.

Most importantly, ignore short term volatility and focus on long term.