flu, I am down on my income portfolio (dividend-paying stocks) by… something. I use the portfolio for income, so I don’t pay as much attention to the market value. National City bank is in there, and some other banks, so I expect the dividends will be down a bit next year. Market values are probably down by 2-5% from year-end. What I care about is the dividends, and I’ll just have to wait and see what happens to dividends in the aggregate in this recession.
To hedge any loss of future dividends from some of my dividend-paying companies suffering permanent damage, I bought yen/british pound futures and yen/euro futures in mid-Dec, for a total notional amount equal to 150% of my stock portfolio (to account for a 1/3 tax rate on the futures). Overall, I am probably ahead by a few %.
