Are You Seeing a Loss?

We can compare VYM with the S&P 500 to see if it is performing as expected.

If you are not seeing a loss, you must be either ignoring your investments or have put most of your money into cash, CD’s, and other “safe” investments. However, if you did that, you are suffering a long-term loss against inflation.

The following quote makes me smile. It is a fancy way of saying that you don’t have a loss until you sell and then you realize you lost money. So most of us have learned an “unmonetized lesson” this year.

“One of my personal investment mantras is that there’s no such thing as a loss, it’s just an unmonetized lesson.” Ted Weschler

Winquist YTD Results

Honesty prevents me from saying that we are still seeing growth in the total value of our portfolio. However, when I compare our returns with the overall market, with the S&P 500, with the NASDAQ, and with the DOW, we are beating all of them. The reason is quite simple. I focus on dividend growth investments. One of those investments is an ETF with the ticker symbol VYM. Yesterday I bought another 100 shares of VYM (Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF) for my ROTH IRA, bringing our total shares to 2,525. One reason I bought now is that I think the quarterly dividend will be announced early next week.

Why Do I Like VYM?

VYM does better than most investments when there is bad news in the market.

The easiest way for me to tell you is by using pictures from Seeking Alpha and from Vanguard’s website. Therefore, what follows are some pictures that tell the story. Each picture will explain the multiple reasons VYM is, I believe, a good long-term investment.

VYM pays quarterly dividends. The next dividend will be announced in the next week, if history repeats.
INCREASING DIVIDENDS: VYM has shown that they buy investments that pay increasing dividends.
VYM has a dividend growth rate of 6.76% and they have grown the dividend for 11 years.
The Ten-year performance is very good. SOURCE: Vanguard
If you want the September dividend, you need to buy soon!
Dividends that grow must be supported by earnings growth. VYM has that characteristic.
In addition to growing dividends, the value of our VYM shares is increasing.

Full Disclosure

Cindie and I own 2,525 shares of VYM as a long-term investment. The other ETFs we own are SCHD, DGRO, SPYD, QYLD, XYLD, and ONEY. VYM is our largest ETF holding.