Investments in 2012

As one of my resolutions for the year I will be paying closer attention to my investments and working to grow them this year. As I mentioned in my 2012 recap post I did make my goal of growing my investments by $10k for the year, mostly from my auto deductions to my IRA and some good market growth. This year I want to focus more on my dividend stocks.

Overall my investments did quite well for the year with a return of 12.35%. Although this a bit under the S&P rate of 14% it is not to shabby. I’m going to break down what I own and how they have done.

IRA Account

In my Vanguard IRA account I had an automatic contribution of $80 and it is distributed amongst these 4 funds:

VTSMX – Total stock market fund
VGSIX – REIT index fund
VGTSX – Total international stock index fund
VIPSX – Inflation-protected securities fund

Overall the this account had a 13.26% return for 2012 with no losers so I’m happy there. I am keeping this account balanced with 15% in bonds (VIPSX) even though Vanguard recommends 22% at my age. I figure when I hit 50 I’ll bring it mor in line but because of the late start I want to be a little more aggressive.

For this year I’m keeping the auto contribution as is for now and thinking about increasing a bit around April. Right now it is set at $4,100 a year and gives me room to contribute $900 more by April 15th.

Dividend Stock Account

I use Buyandhold.com for my dividend stock account. It has a low fee which gives me 2 free trades a month and free auto dividend reinvestment. Over all this account only did 7.62% return for 2012 and did have a couple losers that dragged it down.

The first loser of the year was Intel (INTC) which was down 19.69% for 2012. It is also my biggest holding for this account which helped bring it down. With a dividend yield of only 4.25% I’ll be looking at this closer this month and decide if its a keeper.

The other loser was Seadrill (SDRL) down 3.93%. I’ve only had this a few months and is my smallest holding. I know I bought high but with a dividend yield of 8.99% I will continue with Seadrill dollar cost average while it is down currently

My biggest winner of the year was Sempra Energy (SRE) which was up a nice 33.45% for the year. I have not put to much more into this stock as the price has taken off and I know from history (I owned this one before) that it will have a down cycle. For this year I will watch it and do small buys on the dips.

The other two stocks in this account are AT&T (T) and GE (GE) which were up 19% and 16% respectively.

For 2013 I plan on continuing to add to each of these holdings by making 2 purchases a month (to use my 2 free trades) at least. I’m also going to be looking for at least one more stock to add to the account as well.

How did your investments do in 2012? Any recommendations for 2013?

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