Dave Van Knapp

I. Dave Van Knapp’s Lessons in Dividend Growth Investing
Lesson 1: What is a Dividend?
Lesson 2: Dividend Growth
Lesson 3: The 5-Year Rule
Lesson 4: The Power of Compounding
Lesson 5: The Power of Reinvesting Dividends
Lesson 6: Yield and Yield on Cost
Lesson 7: Dividends are Independent from the Market
Lesson 8: How to Collect 10% Yields from Great Dividend Growth Stocks
Lesson 9: Why I’ve Loaded My Portfolio with Dividend Growth Stocks
Lesson 10 (Part I): Reinvest Your Dividends Selectively to Enhance Your Returns
Lesson 10 (Part II): Reinvest Your Dividends Automatically to Build Long-Term Positions
Lesson 11: Valuation

II. Other Articles from Dave Van Knapp
Ventas (VTR): A Top Dividend Growth Stock for 2014 — May 7, 2014
Sunoco Logistics Partners (SXL): A Top Dividend Growth Stock for 2014 — April 24, 2014
Procter & Gamble (PG): A Top Dividend Growth Stock for 2014 — April 18, 2014
Coca-Cola (KO): A Top Dividend Growth Stock for 2014 — March 4, 2014

III. Dave Van Knapp’s Dividend Growth Portfolio (DGP) Alerts
I Just Bought Ventas (VTR) – May 28, 2014
I Just Sold Darden Restaurants (DRI) — April 11, 2014
Why I Sold All of My Shares of Intel (INTC) — March 31, 2013
An Introduction to My Real-Money Dividend Growth Portfolio — March 15, 2013

IV. Dave Van Knapp’s Dividend Growth Portfolio (DGP)
The following portfolio is managed in real time by Dave Van Knapp. He created it to demonstrate what can be accomplished through a dividend growth strategy. Here’s what you should know about this portfolio:

  • It is not presented as best or a model. It is simply a demonstration.
  • The portfolio exists in real money at E*Trade. Dave created it in 2008 and has been managing it ever since.
  • The goal of the portfolio is not to maximize wealth… it’s to optimize income, balancing factors like amount, growth rate, and safety. Dave manages the portfolio with that central goal in mind.
  • The portfolio has never suffered an annual drop in income since it was created. In fact, annual increases in income have been far more than inflation.

To learn more about the background and purpose of Dave’s Dividend Growth Portfolio, please see this article, which was published as an introduction when we first began to display the portfolio.

To see Dave’s “Constitution” that he uses to manage this portfolio, please click here.

Dave has a specific income goal for his Dividend Growth Portfolio. It is to achieve a yield on cost of 10% within 10 years of its inception. (To learn more about yield on cost, see Dividend Growth Investing, Lesson 6: Yield and Yield on Cost.)

In dollars, that means that Dave wants his portfolio to be delivering at least $4678 per year by June 1, 2018. The following graph shows how the DGP’s actual income (blue line) rises each year, keeping pace with the red goal line that will get him to $4678 in 2018.

Notice also that both lines curve upwards. That is a clear demonstration of compounding in action. (See Dividend Growth Investing, Lesson 4: The Power of Compounding.)

In June, there were no changes to the portfolio. Dave expects to make one more purchase in 2014 with accumulated dividend. Dave reinvest dividends when they accumulate to $1,000.