Singtel Announces Dividend Record and Payment Date

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Singtel finally announced its dividend record and payment dates for the year ending  March 31, 2011. This includes the payment of a final dividend of 9.0 cents and a special dividend of 10.0 cents. The record date is August 10, 2011 at 17:00 and the payment date is August 26, 2011.

While it is great to finally receive the notice of the record and payment dates I do wish they were far earlier! I’m not sure I want to hold onto Singtel shares for that long given the market downturn, which really seems to have taken hold in the USA, Australia and most other markets since April-May peaks.

Since my previous post I have sold my Starhub ($2.78) and SP Ausnet ($1.20) shares to try and minimize any further impact of the downturn. I’ll be keeping an eye on my other shares for the rest of June and determine which ones I can sell as I move back into cash.

I’ve also decided to start watching price movements of high dividend paying stocks around their dividend record dates to determine if a hit and run strategy makes sense for some shares. I suspect the costs of buying and selling will outweigh the benefits, but I’ll do the analysis and evaluate the approach before making a final decision.

Adding Google’s +1 to WordPress with Twenty Ten

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I added Google’s new +1 button to this blog with relative ease, but then found out it didn’t work! I must admit I was a bit lazy and didn’t follow the instructions to the letter, but it appeared to be working with the button added to the bottom of each post on the main page and on a single post’s page. Then someone pointed out they were getting an error, oops!

Since I made a mess of adding the +1 button I thought I should share what I did incorrectly and the correct way to get it working with WordPress using the default “Twenty Ten” theme.

What is Google’s +1 Button?

The Google +1 button for websites was only launched at the start of June, 2011. It is still early days and therefore difficult to determine the full implications of the +1 button, so I’ll just give the basic information here, rather than predicting what the future holds.

The idea of the +1 button is similar to Facebook’s like button, which I have also added to this site. That is, you can show your friends and contacts which things you find interesting on the web such as a web page, a video, a search result or even an ad. Google’s +1 button also integrates with Google’s services, enabling you to see +1 information in both the search results and on advertisements. There is also integration with non-Google sites to help customize content and ads.

None of this will work without your own Google account and if you want the non-Google site integration you have to change a preference setting in your account information. If you already have a Google account you can go to your account preferences where you should see an option to edit “+1 on non-Google sites” under the “Personal Settings” section. Once you click the edit link it will take you this screen:

Google +1 PreferencesNotice that it is set to “Disable” by default (a sensible policy!), so you need to “Enable” it to get the full integration with non-Google sites. I’m not quite sure what they mean by “personalise content” other than showing which friends actually clicked on the +1 button instead of just the numbers of people who have clicked on it (as shown in the image above). In any case I have enabled the option to see what happens.

If you want your contacts to be able to see which +1 buttons you have clicked on you need to make some adjustments to your Google profile too. You should see a “+1” tab on your profile page where you can set the preference to keep it private or to make it public. Here is mine:

Google +1 Profile TabYou can see that my preference is set to private (“This tab is only visible to you.”). You can change this preference by editing your profile which will show you the following screen:

Google +1 Profile Tab Preference ChangeI haven’t changed this preference yet. I didn’t even know I had a Google profile before I started reading about Google’s +1 button! 🙂

Here are some handy links if you want to know more: Google’s +1 Page, Google’s Profile Information Page.

How to get the Code?

I actually had some information appear on my Google Adsense dashboard about the Google +1 button which took me to the correct page to get the relevant code. You can also go directly to the main configuration page which allows you to change a few options before getting the final code.

Google +1 Button ConfigurationAs you can see above there are two main cope snippets that you need to use. The first is the Javascript code reference and the second is the code to make the button appear.

How NOT to Add the Google +1 Button to WordPress!

I was lazy and thought well I wonder what happens if you just copy and paste the code into the loop.php and loop-single.php, even though it says to put the script tag in the <head> section or just before the </body> tag. Well it worked, or so I thought. The button appeared in the correct place and I was quite chuffed with my efforts, so I went and added the Facebook like button too. I didn’t test the button because I thought it would be a bit lame to click on my own website. In hindsight I probably should have!

I was talking to my stepfather this morning and showed him what I had done, as he has a couple of blogs that he is working on too. He was curious and decided to click on the Google +1 button which ended up with the +1 button turning red in anger with an “!” in the middle of it. I tried it too and then faced the same problem.

Time to RTFM!

How to Add the Google +1 Button to WordPress!

Funnily enough, if you actually follow the instructions that Google provides then not only will the +1 button appear on your blog, it will actually work too! 😉

I put the script tag just before the </body> tag by editing the footer.php file. Depending on where you want the +1 button to appear you can then edit the other files as appropriate. For example, if you just want to have the +1 button appear on your single post pages then you only need to edit the loop-single.php file.

I decided to put it on both my main page, after every post, and on a single post page. This meant I had to edit both the loop-single.php file and the loop.php file.

To edit the “Twenty Ten” theme you need to log into your dashboard screen, click on Appearance and then select Editor. This will normally bring you to the stylesheet file by default. The other files you need to edit are listed on the right hand side.

First off, select the footer.php link and put the first code snippet just before the </body> tag, like this:

Wordpress Theme Editor - Footer

Now select the loop-single.php link and insert the second code snippet like this:

Wordpress Theme Editor loop-single.php

It’s the same for anywhere else you would like to put it, so just edit the relevant file and insert the code where you want the button to appear. You could also put the code in a widget if you so desired.

Conclusion

Google is introducing more social networking features to try and keep up with Facebook. The +1 button looks like it might be a useful tool for both web users and webmasters, but time will tell.

There are probably better ways of adding the Google +1 button to WordPress with the Twenty Ten theme, such as using custom functions, but this works for what I needed and I hope you find it useful too!

 

Generating Income with High Dividend Paying Shares – May Update

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Edited on June 03 to add a Starhub dividend payment I missed.

It’s over three months since my last post on the shares that I was looking to purchase to generate income through high dividend payments. Therefore, I thought it was about time to provide an update on my portfolio’s performance.

I have created a table to keep track of my stock purchases including the dividends paid and the profit/loss thus far.

Stock Date Purchased Purchase Price
 Market Price Profit/Loss
SPH 16/02/11 $3.98 $3.86 -3.02%
Singtel 22/02/11 $2.92 $3.21 9.86%
Singtel 18/03/11 $2.87 $3.21 11.77%
SP Ausnet 16/02/11 $1.14 $1.20 5.45%
Starhub 16/02/11 $2.62 $2.79 6.57%
SingPost 16/02/11 $1.17 $1.14 -2.48%
Stock Dividend Total Profit/Loss (Capital+Dividend)
SPH $0.07 -1.26%
Singtel $0.19 16.36%
Singtel $0.19 18.38%
SP Ausnet $0.052 10.02%
Starhub $0.10 10.39%
SingPost $0.025 -0.34%

Looking at the numbers thus far, I have made a 5% profit on the capital (including purchasing costs), which increases to an 9.1% profit when including announced dividends. Given most of the purchases were in the middle of February that equates to more than 15% p/a and 27.5% p/a respectively. This is better than what I had expected, although it was helped by some companies paying special dividends on top of their normal payouts.

However, I’m now getting a bit nervous about the overall world economy for a few reasons:

  1. Growing Euro Zone debt problems.
  2. USA debt ceiling negotiation problems.
  3. End of Quantitative Easing II (QEII) in June.
  4. Signs of growing inflation and slowing global economic growth.

Any one of the above could cause a pull back on the markets and any combination would probably cause major drops. Therefore, I’m very tempted to get out of the market with the gains that I have already made.

Unfortunately I can’t just sell all the shares to take the stated profit and run. As I mentioned above the calculations include announced dividends, not paid dividends. Some companies are quite tardy in their payments (Singtel hasn’t even announced payment dates!), while others are relatively quick to payout (SPH).

SPH paid its dividend on May 24, 2011, while Starhub is next in line to pay on June 02, 2011. Unfortunately SPH’s share price has gone down since I purchased it, but I’m happy to hold on to the stock for the moment. Starhub is looking quite attractive at $2.79, to take both the dividend and capital gain, for roughly an 9% profit after costs. I’m also tempted to sell my Singtel shares at $3.21, but I really want that nice dividend, so I’ll wait for the payment dates to be announced before making a final decision.

SP Ausnet is a special case with the dividend payment due at the end of June, right when I expect the end of QEII to be making people have a serious think about their market exposure. If things do go pear shaped then the Aussie dollar would likely pull back against the Singapore dollar. This would decrease the value of both the share price and dividend of SP Ausnet, so depending how things go I may have to just take the capital gain and forget about the dividend. I can always buy the stock on the Aussie share market if the Aussie dollar dives and then make some gain on the currency once it recovers too.

I did know that the problems I listed above were likely to bite in the middle of this year, so I was quite prepared to get out of the share market around this time. Therefore, I feel like I’m becoming a bit of a short term investor, rather than a long term buy-and-hold investor. This has made me wonder if many people have much luck with a hit and run investment approach on high dividend paying stocks. That is, an investor purchases the share before the price build up in anticipation of the dividend payout and then sells again once the stock recovers from its expected post dividend drop. This would limit an investor’s exposure to major shocks, while still maintaining the income stream. There are the higher buying and selling costs to consider if using this method. I’d be interested to know if anyone has tried this? Feel free to drop a comment below!

Disclaimer: The above is my own opinion and not financial advice.