A Simple Metholodgy
During 2012 I used my four Dividend Machine Criteria to select forty eight stocks that qualified as Dividend Machines.
I wanted to compare this group of stocks to the SPDR Dividend ETF symbol (SDY.) So I recorded the number of shares of SDY I would have bought with each buy of a Dividend Machine. At the end of 2012, the Dividend Portfolio held 4800 shares of various stocks and the SPDR portfolio held 3,165.62 share of SDY.
Buy & Hold
During 2013 no stocks in the 2012 Dividend Machine portfolio were sold or bought; although one stock in the Dividend Machine portfolio had a spin off (ABT spin off of ABBV.) Dividends were not reinvested.
Similarly, no shares of the 2012 SDY portfolio were bought, sold or reinvested during 2013. SDY portfolio declared a greater than typical distribution December 2013.
The point is that both portfolios were bought over 2012 and then I followed their performance in 2013. The results are presented below.
On every level, the 2012 Dividend Machine Portfolio, which incurred no costs during 2013 performed better than a similar investment in SDY.
I rest my case.
TheMoneyMadam