June 2023 Dividend Income Update

calendar Jul 3, 2023 · 3 min read · Dividend Income Update
Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash

Summer has officially started and I finally have time to write blog posts again, yay! I’ve been keeping myself busy these past few months continuing the activities that I participated in pre-pandemic, being a plant dad by clearing out weeds, planting new seedlings, and for the most part ignoring the markets. The major stock market indices have roared back with the S&P 500 up 15.5% and the Nasdaq 100 up 30.5%. Everyone was predicting a recession that hasn’t surfaced (yet). I, too, expected a slowdown and decided to put some money to work in fixed income paying north of 5%. I’m still not convinced that this bull run has legs. The rise in the S&P 500 was driven by a few large-cap tech companies.

The biggest thing to come out of the first half of 2023 is the rise of artificial intelligence, or AI, and more specifically generative AI. We’re not talking about self-aware sentient androids like Data from Star Trek. We’re simply talking about things that can understand natural language, and by that I mean American English specifically, and produce something that is fairly good quality. You can ask it to generate images. You can ask it to write text. But it’s not foolproof. You can even ask it to write code. I’ve been using AI tools at work to help me write code and, for the most part, it’s useful because I don’t have to look up documents online. But it does make mistakes and requires humans to evaluate and correct. I don’t see AI as a threat to my job, but I can see it making me more efficient. The recent rise in AI came from the introduction of GPT-3 and GPT-4, which include larger data sets. GPT-4 is a much more powerful model that can understand images and makes fewer mistakes.

Many tech companies are now piling into AI-powered products and features. In the short-term, semiconductor companies like Nvidia are going to benefit. I think this fad has staying power, but it’s not going to drastically our lives. The rumor mill wonders whether our jobs are safe and I can undoubtedly say that they are safe.

In June, I received a total of $7,951 in dividends and interest. I earned a cumulative passive income of $21,633 this year. For comparison, I earned a cumulative passive income of $15,655 this time last year. At the end of 2022, I earned $31,566 in passive income. Of the dividends received this month, $2,925 was earned in my taxable account.

As a reminder, I convert any USD amount to CAD using the month-end exchange rate published by the Bank of Canada. For June 2023, I used an exchange rate of 1.3240.

Account Income
Cash $859
Margin $2,066
Retirement $5,026
Total $7,951


I received dividends from the following stocks and ETFs in June:

  • Blackrock Inc (BLK)
  • Brookfield Infrastructure Corp (BIPC.TO)
  • Brookfield Renewable Corp (BEPC.TO)
  • Canadian Tire Corp (CTC.A.TO)
  • CT Real Estate Investment Trust (CRT.UN.TO)
  • Enbridge Inc (ENB.TO)
  • Fortis Inc (FTS.TO)
  • Global X High Interest Savings ETF (CASH.TO)
  • Granite Real Estate Investment Trust (GRT.UN.TO)
  • Intact Financial Corp (IFC.TO)
  • iShares Balanced Growth Core Index ETF (XGRO.TO)
  • Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT)
  • Magna International Inc (MG.TO)
  • Methanex Corp (MX.TO)
  • Sun Life Financial Inc (SLF.TO)
  • T Rowe Price Group Inc (TROW)
  • Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF (VEU)
  • Vanguard Short-Term Bond Index ETF (BSV)
  • Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)
  • Visa Inc (V)
  • Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA)
  • WisdomTree Floating Rate Treasury Fund (USFR)

The only thing I purchased in June was an 18-month Tangerine GIC, which is paying 5.50%.

How did your month go? Did you buy or sell any stocks or ETFs?

Dividend Income