Sold: Walgreen (NYSE: WAG) and Dundee REIT (TSX: D.UN)

In order to create some liquidity in my TFSA and RRSP (there are some companies I’d like to buy on their next dip), I sold my position in Dundee REIT and half my shares in Walgreens this week.

Walgreens has had a great run, and my shares were up over 50% this year alone. Although the company is an industry leader, and a proven dividend grower, the shares were yielding about 2.3% at the time I sold half my position. I also think Walgreens is a bit expensive at the moment, with a P/E approaching 25X.

Dundee was another company in which I had realized a large gain (over 50%), but had slumped a bit lately as bond interest rates rose. Even though it yielded over 7%, the distributions grew very slowly, and I wanted to move some capital away from office REITs.

Now all I have to do is wait for the two stocks I’d like to purchase to drop a bit. Sounds simple enough, but it’s always tricky to sit on a bunch of cash in my portfolio.  

Home for a Rest

After taking some time off blogging to finalize planning my wedding, and then taking a four-week European vacation, I’m back ready to share my thoughts on investing.

Before leaving, I made some purchases adding to my positions in both Riocan REIT (REI.UN) and H&R REIT (HR.UN). I think REITs are undervalued at the moment, and bought two of the leaders in Canada, both of which have committed to increasing their payouts over time. 

Granted, I didn’t follow my portfolio very closely while on vacation, but there were a couple headlines that caught my attention, and impacted my portfolio.

-          Verizon’s decision not to enter Canada helped restore the share values of my Canadian teleco’s, adding about 3% to my portfolio’s overall value.

-          Microsoft’s planned purchase of Nokia for $7.2B knocked a couple dollars off Microsoft’s share price, but didn’t materially impact my portfolio (I only hold 100 shares of MSFT).

-          The Canadian banks delivered very strong quarterly results. This was the least surprising for me, and helped boost my portfolio’s value by a percentage point or two.

In terms of what’s on deck, two companies on my watch list, Enbridge Income Fund and Realty Income Corporation, are very interesting to me at their current price-levels.  I’d like to initiate positions in both, and am just figuring out some details around where to hold them and how to finance the purchases.