End of Year Thoughts

It's been quite a year - we had extreme bear market lows followed by a huge bounce. Although we are still not back to the prior market high, steep losses have been significantly lessened since March.

We are not seeing the returns being expressed via any significant dividend growth. In fact most increases have been in the single digits. Still, we have not endured any more cuts for many months now, and dividend growth performance tends to be a lagging indicator of economic recovery, so we expect the rate of dividend growth to improve in the coming year.

We will continue to focus on companies with wide moats, strong cash flows and good dividend growth history, and sell any remaining 'dividend losers' into strength.