Thursday’s Tool – Dividend Tracker iPhone

An app developer contacted me and asked if I would join his test group for a dividend-focused iPhone application. I agreed. The potential for the app was obvious in my first few tests. I was also impressed with the developer’s willingness to address my needs. One need was the ability to upload my positions using a csv file. The options within this free app are too numerous to discuss in a short blog post, so I plan to do two or three posts in the coming weeks to illustrate the potential uses of the app.

Let’s start with the main screen. It shows my traditional IRA positions. I deleted the portfolio value, change $, yearly income and cost basis dollar amounts but did not touch anything else. (NOTE: There are many tools available for free. There is a reasonable fee if you wish to unlock the complete functionality of the app.)

Here is the power of just this first screen:

A quick view of my results and my current yield. I buy and sell positions, so the 19.50% gain is on my open positions. My gain on closed positions over the last twenty years is much higher. I take dividends in cash and then buy new positions or additional shares of existing investments. My average annual return is 10%.
I can see and scroll through all my positions. If I click on one of them, the app shows me dividend-related information for that position, including the ex-dividend date, pay date, payment frequency, the number of shares, yearly income, today’s yield, the annualized dividend per share and my gain. I can also see what percentage of my portfolio is in this one investment. You don’t want to get too concentrated in a single investment! See the ticker detail image at the end of this post for an example.
The Filter/Sort function lets me select the investments in a specific sector or multiple sectors. If I want to see Technology, Consumer Cyclical, Financial Services, ETF Fund (like VYM or SCHD), Consumer Defensive, Industrials or Healthcare positions, it is easy to do so.
The screen visualizes my gain or loss for a position. As you can see, my investment in TGT is up 84.44% for all my lots. I reinvest dividends for TGT, so I might have to reload my positions at some point to see the up-to-date values if more shares were purchased. From the developer: “There is an in-App purchase of DRIP (dividend reinvestment). If you pay for Platinum or al la carte DRIP purchase, Divtracker has a backend process that monitors payment dates of your holdings and sends a push notification to you on the payment date and automatically simulate the dividend reinvestment based on the prior day’s closing price. If you do not DRIP on certain holdings, you can toggle this off per holding. And for the perfectionist, if the shares do not match exactly, you can edit the details.”
A final nice feature is the calendar of dividends. The calendar feature (upper right icon) displays the dividends that are coming this month and in subsequent months. The following image illustrates this feature. For retirees who want to know what cash is coming each month, this is very helpful.