I wish I could say it ain’t so, but I jumped the gun when I added to my stake in Organon recently. When the stock got some love from Barron’s, I felt sort of vindicated. I’ve been holding on ever since the company, a provider of women’s pharmaceutical and health care products, was spun off from Merck.

A little voice in the back of my head said why not wait until the first week of May, when the company releases earnings. Sell on rumor, buy on news. I should have waited for the news.

The company reported a slight drop in revenue, and a more worrisome drop in profitability. (EBITDA was down about 20%.) Combined with a relatively high debt load, these trends are worrisome for an investor hoping to rely on a a stable dividend payout.

Still, having absorbed the drop in valuation, I’m not ready to bailout yet. (I may rethink that loyalty as I dig into the company’s balance sheet a little further.) The dividend as it stands is an impressive 5%. Can that be sustained? time will tell.

More importantly, the P/E ratio is only about 7.5. I fear that if I sell at this level I may be selling too low. Still, I hope you didn’t follow my advice last week and buy some shares. It’s a better value this week, though I wish that wasn’t because the company’s earnings disappointed.

Well, I wasn’t planning to take a year off from my income oriented investing blog, but I’ve made so few changes to my portfolio during the past year that I just kind of fell out of the habit. But now it’s time to sharpen my investing focus and actively manage my portfolio again, which means (hopefully) I’ll have a few insights worth sharing here.

During the past year, I set aside most of my available cash for a yet to be realized condo remodeling project. Fretting about the possibility of further stock price declines, I put some cash in TIPS rather than hazarding the money on stocks.

Market timing is a fool’s errand, of course, but I’m comfortable making some purchases.

Today, I added to my stake in Organon, a provider of women’s health care products. The company is a spinoff from Merck, one of my most successful long-term holdings. It was a bit of an impulse move. I’ve grown tired of thinking about the purchase power of my remodeling cash being slowly eroded away by inflation. A wiser me might have waited until the company releases earnings next Thursday. But the stock (OGN) got some love from Barron’s recently. And with a PE ratio below 7 and a dividend payout of nearly 5%, I decided to scoop up some more shares. It seems like the most attractively priced stock in my dividend portfolio at the moment, and it made sense from a portfolio balancing perspective.

When earnings come out next week, I’ll learn if my choice was prescient or hasty.

Two weeks into 2022, and I’m finally ready to assess some of the market prognostications for this year and add my own outlook to the mix.

Bottom line: a lot of people think the market is “priced for perfection,” but they expect it to largely stay that way. Inflation, geopolitical risks, and pandemic disruptions be damned.

While I’m not a natural pessimist, I’m taking a very cautious approach to buying in today’s market. And I expect to see a choppy market, especially after the broad market’s big, sustained gains over the last several years.

If you see news about Russia invading Ukraine, or a monthly inflation report measure that hits double digits, I think we could get reintroduced to what a sudden bear market feels like. And inflation, if it does rise or remain elevated, could substantially increase debt service payments for the U.S. government as inflation-protected treasury bonds reprice.

Geopolitic crises might not actually affect business much, but they will create a climate of instability and uncertainty, which are poison to the the equity markets. Inflation could subside — most economists expect it to. And most economists thought housing values would never drop just as the Great Recession was blowing toward shore.

In short, risk of market downside is clearly higher than it has been in recent years.

One stumbling block for the economic growth outlook: stagnant employment levels. Without a growing workforce and increases in productivity, it will be hard to generate GDP growth.

If the consensus opinion at the moment seems to be that the broad stock markets may be up or down a little at the end of this year. I’m no futurologist, but I think the risk of a substantial downturn is higher than many market observers would like to think. But hey, market corrections create buying opportunities for investors playing the long game.

And while dividend stocks don’t usually prosper in a rising rate environment, the market currently seems to be discounting technology growth stocks in today’s rising inflation environment. Paying for the prospect of future income is less attractive if that income is expected to be in depreciated value. A current dividend is a “bird in the hand” that might not lose luster as long as rates don’t rise too appreciatively. In short, 2022 could be a year when value stocks finally score a win over growth stocks.

In the coming days, I plan to share a few thoughts about the outlook for the New Year. But at the moment, I’ll just reflect on an experience I may have to get used to as a dividend investor.

Today the broad U.S. stock market indices all rose, and my portfolio lost a little bit of value.

I blame the news that inflation ran at an 7% pace last year. That will put pressure on bond prices and also income-producing stocks that have acted as a sort of fixed-income alternative for investors in the low rate environment we’ve enjoyed for many years. Until inflation starts trending down, which I hope will happen soon, I expect my portfolio will see some downside risk from the threat of higher interest rates.

Still, looking across my portfolio I’m not chomping at the bit to add to my positions — right at the moment. I did, a few months ago, increase my holdings of AT&T (T). The company’s plan to spin off its entertainment and media assets seems to be on track, the stock price remains depressed compared to peers in my judgment, and while we don’t know what the dividend payout will be once the company resets its business, it’s likely to be a yield that looks attractive compared to peers. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to collecting that last 7% dividend payout in February. As eager shoppers say, “I’ll take it! I’ll take it!”