10/17
Since the dividend basket has reached its target for 2025, I have more time to think and plan for the 2026 version of the basket. In terms of basket ideas, this year started with a basket slanted towards shipping names. I added NAT mid year after some in-depth digging and timely nibbles. But, I am realizing that while it has a nice dividend quality e.g. its decades long history of paying a dividend, it is also a streaky kind of stock. I will likely leave NAT in the basket for 2025. But, for 2026, it will likely drop out. That means I need “replacement” ideas. One crossed my radar at the beginning of the week. Probably more along the lines of a traditional dividend pick - Hormel (HRL). You know, … [Add musical jingle] Spam, Spam, Spam … and of course, other food brands e.g. Skippy, Compleats, etc.
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What kind of target did you set?
JimA
It was dependent on the basket holding. A “normal” holding e.g. QCOM, would likely be the prior year payout with a slight adjustment. I had an inkling that shipping, especially tankers, would have a lowered yield in 2025. So, I baselined 5% and then tweaked per individual holding. ZIM was an arbitrary fixed round number that translated to 15% - 16% yield. ZIM has a quirky aspect to its Q4 payout in a productive year, so I figured Q4 2024 had a strong likelihood of being a nice payout. YieldMax ETFs were a somewhat aggressive target in each case. It was $6 per share on an annual basis for YMAG, prorated for additions during the year. Summed up the individual holding targets, and that became the basket target. CLCO and LPG made early exits, I removed them from basket total. FRO made one dividend payout, I left the FRO “full year” target in the basket target.
So you didn’t have a target of $X in dividends each year? My target is receiving my RMD amount in dividends each year; meaning I don’t need to sell anything to take my RMD. And a little left over just in case. Nine years in to RMDs and the plan is working great. I’ve projected out to age 100 and I probably have another 10 years before sales of stock might be necessary.
JimA
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@JimA759s- You certainly have an interesting target.
On a somewhat related note, there is a Reddit thread I came across recently where a guy poses the question whether a $500K portfolio can provide him a $3K monthly income. From my perspective, I don’t want to be that guy at several levels.
- I don’t want to start to learn about dividend investing/income when I’m in my retirement. Or, very close to retirement.
- I don’t want my entire retirement portfolio to generate X. I want it to generate a lot less than X. That provides me flexibility if other issues come up in the future. [Edit: stated this point badly. If the entire portfolio is just generating X, it isn’t going to be cutting it. I want a smaller portion of my retirement portfolio able to generate X. So if the smaller portion fails to get X, I have additional resources to utilize]
Back to the question - What is X for me? Here’s what I said in the initial post
in 2025, more definitively I can say a major purpose of the dividend basket is to give me a leg up in identify names of companies I would like to hold in the future to provide SOME income. I’m not looking for 50% future income at this time.
No X for me. There is a target currently (Tg) and I like to picture it as fraction of X. I didn’t save the initial target, but $7200 is probably a decent guess on the start. The additions to the basket means Tg increases during the course of the year. A planned improvement to tracking in 2026 is to capture the Target column (at least) mid-year.
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As mentioned upstream, the 2025 dividend target has been met. That has given me the flexibility to think about adjustments and tweaks I would like to make for the 2026 basket. Somewhat by chance a new idea popped up. Or perhaps, a 2-in-1 new idea popped up … in shipping, of course 
Some years back, a private equity firm, Stonespeak, completed a deal to take Teekay Gas Partners (TGP) private. Well apparently, it is possible to invest in this entity, or the “re-imagined TGP” via the preferred shares route. The shipping company is called Seapeak, and has two flavors of preferred shares - Seapeak LLC Preferred A & Seapeak LLC Preferred B. Per the Press release link below, the entity files a Form 1099, not a K-1
Interesting chart behavior
https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/SEAL.PR.A
Trades over par currently. And chart seems to suggest the might occasionally be a preferred share owner desperate to get out. I guess, one negative is, the company is not publicly traded, so I don’t think there are quarterly reporting requirements, only requirements wrt to the preferred shares. My prior preferred shares were Tsakos Energy Network Preferred Series E (TEN-PE), which did have a public component. How does one monitor the performance of the underlying Seapeak company? That I don’t know. Food for thought.
10/31 There was a significant event at the start of the week i.e. QCOM price bounce on 10/27, that really changed the port. While QCOM did zoom past $200/sh on 10/27, it did not hold the gains. By the end of the day, it was down near the $190-levels. And during subsequent days, inched lower. Then lower, and on 10/31 bumped up again. Still the largest idea in the dividend basket, and priced higher than end of Q3 2025. Some clumsy moves with INSW trading. Some better plans with BWLP. Accumulation with HRL, and a few other smaller moves.
- Holdings QCOM 17.13% YMAG 13.43% BWLP 10.27
- 5% - 10%: FLNG, INSW, QYLD, NVDY, GLNG, TGT, HRL
- Under 5%: WU, TRMD, NAT, SSTK (on-going merger deal), GPTY
As I continue my ongoing quest to find “good” dividend candidates for a hypothetical future dividend group of holdings, some thinking on whether QYLD stays or goes. I mean, I have YMAG which is a very concentrated version of the top end of QYLD. I’ve added to YMAG during the year, and I’ve also started nibbling in GPTY. So I have at least some overlap with QYLD already. So perhaps, QYLD is not as necessary or not providing me as much “dividend independence” as needed. Some additional nuances pointed out by this SeekingAlpha article on JEPQ (JP Morgan version of QYLD)
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4841423-jepq-is-the-massive-10-percent-yield-worth-the-risk?mailingid=42479267&messageid=must_reads&position=must_reads_new_recurring_sept_a1&serial=42479267.22684&source=email_must_reads&utm_campaign=Must+Reads+recurring+2025-11-11&utm_content=seeking_alpha&utm_medium=email&utm_source=seeking_alpha&utm_term=must_reads
Obviously, there are pros and cons of QYLD vs JEPQ. I have given QYLD a spin. QYLD’s share price has not eroded as badly as YMAG. That’s a useful data-point in QYLD’s favor. But, YMAG has produced more income. So, there’s that angle.
On the shipping side, although I am not in the prediction game, I think the tanker companies might have a better dividend outlook in 2026. That’s on the conventional tanker segment (so INSW, TRMD, HAFN) vs the liquefied folks (FLNG, LPG, BWLP). Having taken some major losses with LPG, especially in the taxable ac, will it ever be considered an investment idea? As I peruse LPG transactions, I did make two smaller purchases of LPG, one near the lows. One of those was post-Liberation Day. What if that had been the start of LPG rebuild day? Well, the easy answer is, LPG would be definitely a lot less red in the port
New idea for the basket. Actually, it is an old idea that made a return visit. As I drilled in a little more, I opted for a different variant of Redwood Trust (RWT), that just became available - Redwood Trust 9.5% Notes (RWTO) due 2030. Why? Because RWT is working on cleaning up its legacy business, and redeploying capital moving forward. My logic is that as RWT cleans up its legacy business in the next year or so, there is some safety on the company covering the payment on the Notes. After that. I’m relying on the strength of its newer business segments (Sequoia, CoreVest, Aspire). RWT is more than 50% done with the process, so I figure they have good momentum to finish the effort, and be able to focus on their newer business segments.
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Correction on RWT Notes - I did buy RWTO which are 9% senior notes due in 2029. The new offering is RWTQ and offer a slightly higher 9.5%. While on the subject of RWT, the company also has a preferred share variant - RWT.PR.A is the ticker. This is a fairly new preferred flavor - issued just a couple of years ago. The RWT Notes are senior to both the preferred shares and the common shares.
12/01 The final month to wrap up 2025. A few weeks ago, I had questioned whether I needed QYLD in the port, when I had YMAG in the port and was adding to newer ETF, GPTY. Combined, the two YieldMax ETFs had much overlap with QYLD. After some thinking this past week, maybe there is a purpose served by having the names in the port concurrently. I already know that YMAG vs QYLD, the former has the higher yield. But, it will likely swing up and down much more than QYLD. But, what about QYLD vs GPTY? The latter is a newer ETF and may not have the choppiness of YMAG. I did trim QYLD today. However, during the year, the QYLD position only changed via DRIP shares. The plan is to start 2026 with QYLD and GPTY at a similar position size, and observe their behavior. The shipping component will likely focus on four names to start. I added to one of the four, FLNG, today. The other three shipping names are INSW, TRMD and BWLP. Though NAT has dividend payout longevity, I do think it is a more opportunistic play. I have a small NAT stake, and will likely monetize the stake down the road, or add to the position if the share price pulls back.