Can it be true? Next month we’ll be entering the third decade of the of the third millennium in the common era? 

Looking back on the last decade, my most prescient stock buys were in the technology sector. As the market recovered from the Great Recession, I added Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and Intel to my holdings. I liked them because they paid dividends which, not too many years ago, were very attractive for their price point. (Cisco and Intel are still attractive from a pure dividend play perspective. Microsoft has been my best performer from a growth perspective but the yield today leaves me hesitant to add more shares.)

Of course, my dividend focus steered me clear of some of the decades biggest winners — the FAANGS. But Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google eluded me. But I’ll settle for what I got from the technology rally that dominated the stock market for much of the 2010s.

So what will the next decade look like? 

Mark Haefele, chief investment officer for UBS Global Wealth Management, sees four economic trends that could drive big returns for companies in the next decade: sustainable investing, genetic therapies, digital transformation, and water scarcity. (His outlook was featured in Barron’s today.)

That means companies that focus on “green” initiatives should fare well. The spread of 5G technology will also facilitate the digital transformation of businesses across industries. 

Because 5G will enhance smart phone performance, companies in the telecommunications space should benefit from spread of 5G wireless technology. 

An earlier Barron’s article highlighted Broadcom (AVGO) as one stock that might benefit from 5G networks. And with a dividend yield at nearly 4% today, it’s a tempting prospect for income investors.

Ever since I moved my personal brokerage account to Schwab, I’ve been extremely pleased with the ease and clarity that I have in managing my account. I’ve had my 401k rollover IRA at Schwab for a long time, but most of that account was in mutual funds and I didn’t do much trading until I diversified my IRA a few years back.

Now, my personal account is entirely individual stocks and funds make up less than half of my IRA. (That’s because when I first allocated about one-third of my IRA to individual stocks, I was smart enough to load up on major technology firms coming out of the Great Recession. Today, individual stocks exceed the balance of mutual funds and ETFs in my IRA. That’s mostly because of fortuitous timing on my acquisition of Microsoft and Intel shares. Unfortunately, I don’t see such low hanging fruit in the market today.)

But back to Schwab — in the upper left had corner of my individual account screen, where it shows the “personal value” of my account, I can also scroll down now and see “Investment Income.” Voila — a nifty little tool for income oriented investments.

It does not provide much of a breakdown of where the income is coming from (for that you still need to look at the monthly statements) but it does aggregate dividend and interest income, from both individual stock or bond holdings and funds. And if you’re like me, and have both a retirement account and an individual brokerage account, it’s a handy way of seeing total estimated annual income and monthly income in real time.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I love ketchup. A good physician would grab the bottle out of my hands as I’m holding it upside down, banging the bottom to get every last dollop on my French fries. (For that matter, the doctor would probably confiscate the fries as well.)

But health concerns are not central to my decision to take a pass on adding Kraft-Heinz (KHC) to my portfolio. Sure, the dividend yield is a tempting 6%, even after the company slashed its dividend by a third earlier this year. And yes, as a New York Times story today pointed out, the stock has lost half its value over the last year, bringing it to a potentially attractive entry point.

But there just doesn’t seem to be much growth momentum – not even a whiff of it.

With the backing of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital Partners, KHC may have seemed like a good turnaround prospect. But most of the news out of the company during the last 12 months has been negative, and 3G Capital recently reduced its stake by about 10%, according to news reports.

The yield is tempting. The turnaround possibilities are still alive. But I’d pass on this high yield stock and look for something more stable in the consumers staples sector with a lower yield at the moment, perhaps General Mills, Proctor & Gamble or Colgate-Palmolive. Shares were trading at a little under $28 on Tuesday. The analysts’ consensus 12-month price target is just $28.39.

Full disclosure: I’ve owned General Mills forever, through good times and bad; I used to own some P&G and perhaps should have held onto it; Colgate-Palmolive has been on my watch list for years, but I keep waiting for a more attractive entry price.

 

Well, what’s an investor supposed to do on a day when the Dow falls some 800 points and all the major U.S. indices are off by more than 2%?

Me, I take a perverse enjoyment watching markets tank. And I remind myself of the big picture — my portfolio, like most, is up substantially in recent years. And I haven’t suffered any real losses in the current selloff because I haven’t joined the herd that is selling in a panic.

Still, I looked across my portfolio at market close today, and I really didn’t see too many stocks that looked like they were priced attractively enough to buy on the dip, as they say. And with recession signs popping up in the economy and an administration that has been putting on a debt-laden show of fiscal and monetary mismanagement, I’m not ready to bet against the economic pessimists right now.

Still, I added a few shares to my Clearway Energy (CWEN) holdings today, but I’d been planning to beef up my stake anyway. And I read an article in Barron’s that reminded me that growth investing has outpaced value investing in recent years, leaving me feeling like an investor who got on the slow train.

Still, Barron’s told me that Goldman Sachs researchers are taking an optimistic view on dividend growth next year and beyond, predicting that S&P 500 companies will increase dividends by 6% overall next year, down from 8% this year. According to the article, a dividend swap measure predicts that dividend growth will slow to 1% next year. Goldman’s report predicts that technology, financial and health care companies will lead the pack in raising dividends in 2020.

Hard to believe that 2020 is right around the corner, isn’t it?