January 2017 dividend income

Earlier today I received my dividend from General Electric, this closes out the month in terms of dividend income. Here’s a look at all the dividends I received this month.

January 2017 dividend income

• Nike: 2.57EUR
• Philip Morris: 53.66EUR
• GlaxoSmithKline: 23.20EUR
• General Electric: 6.62EUR

In total, that’s 86.05EUR in after-taxes dividends for January.

January’s dividend increases

• PZ Cussons: +2.3%
• Omega Healthcare Investors: +1.6%

New buys

• 17 Nike shares
• 5 AB InBev shares

I still have a couple of free trades that expire soon so I’m looking at another mini-buy in the coming days.

Books I’m reading
Last month I mentioned I was reading Shoe Dog, the autobiography from Nike founder Phil Knight. I finished the book a couple of weeks ago and I definitely recommend it to anyone who likes reading about startups and success stories.

In the first chapters, Knight details his trip around the world in his early 20s and explains how he worked up the courage to pursue his “crazy little idea”. He closed a deal with a Japanese shoe company and a couple of months later Knight’s company started selling Onitsuka runner shoes in the US.

I was surprised to read how many growing pains Knight experienced and how he juggled between a day job and managing his rapidly growing company on the side. He always took out as much debt as he could and lived on the edge to make his company grow as fast as possible. Despite high demand for the shoes, the company almost went bankrupt a couple of times due to debt and liquidity issues. Knight and his team of self-described “chronically unemployable” partners also had to deal with two major legal issues, including a lawsuit from Onitsuka as well as issues with the US government that nearly crippled the company.

The book ends with Nike’s IPO, which seems to be the moment things got better. Great read, well written and an interesting journey.

At the moment I’m reading Peter Lynch’s One Up On Wall Street, I started reading it a couple of months ago and picked it up again after finishing Shoe Dog. I’ve read about a third of this book, it offers some nice insights but could use a revision as it’s starting to get pretty old. For example, the book talks about SmithKline Beecham and this is a company that merged with Glaxo Wellcome to become GlaxoSmithKline in 2000. Little details I know but it makes the book feel a bit dated at times.

20,000
As a closing note, congrats to the Dow Jones for finally hitting the 20k mark earlier today. It took over a month to take out this major milestone but finally the question of whether we’d see the US debt level top the $20 trillion mark first or see the DJ hit the 20,000 level first has been answered.

How was your month?

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