Welcome to the summer 2024 edition of the UK Top 40 Quality Dividend Stocks list. As I'm sure you're aware (unless you've been hiding under a rock on the dark side of the moon), the UK is about to hold another general election, and although this is important to me as a citizen of the UK, it isn't all that important to me as an investor. That's because I'm a long-term investor, which means I expect to hold each investment for at least five years, and often much longer. Over that sort of timeframe, the actions and policies of any one government become less important, and it becomes mor ..read more

Diageo is the world’s leading producer of premium alcoholic beverages, with a portfolio of world-leading brands including Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Tanqueray, Bailey’s and many more. Throughout the 21st century, Diageo has produced extremely consistent results, growing its dividend every single year, come rain, shine, global financial crises or pandemics. That’s impressive, but 2024 has not gone well, with falling sales in Latin America and weak growth elsewhere. Those weak results have knocked 35% off Diageo's share price, leaving its shares trading at a far more attractive val ..read more

If you aren’t familiar with Close Brothers, it’s a FTSE 250 bank that was founded in 1878. It had (until recently) a long track record of progressive dividend growth and I added it to the UK Dividend Stocks Portfolio in 2017. Thanks to the pandemic and an ill-judged acquisition, the last few years haven’t exactly been smooth sailing for this company, but things have now gone from bad to worse. In early 2024, its share price collapsed, falling from £8 in January to £3 in February. Shortly after that, Close Brothers suspended its dividend. When one of my holdings cuts or suspends its dividend, t ..read more

Somewhat out of the blue, the FTSE 100 has started to set new all-time highs. Having begun the year at just over 7,700, the index has staged a dramatic advance into new territory, breaching the mythical 8,000 barrier in mid-April. By the end of April, it had already exceeded 8,100, and although we’re not even halfway through May, the FTSE 100 has wasted no time in rocketing past 8,200 and 8,300. As I write, it’s heading towards another record high at 8,400 and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down. For many investors, this string of record highs is surprising because they think the FTSE 100 is ..read more

I first started publishing and updating a list of the top 40 UK dividend stocks in 2022 and, so far, I think it's done what I intended: to provide investors with a simple and free starting point for identifying potential investment candidates. However, the list has received fairly regular criticism that it puts too much weight on high dividend yields, and that's a criticism I readily accept. The list ranks stocks based on their market cap and dividend yield alone, but in practice, I certainly don't invest in stocks just because they have a high yield; they're usually the first stocks to cut or ..read more

Results season is over and for that I am thankful. This year has been particularly busy, with 22 of the portfolio’s 25 holdings announcing interim or annual results in the first quarter. And, while I do enjoy reviewing annual results, you can definitely have too much of a good thing. But enough of my whining; how did the 2024 results season go for the UK Dividend Stocks Portfolio and the wider UK stock market? Let’s start with the overall market. Overall, UK dividend stocks had a generally good results season According to SharePad, there are 183 dividend-paying companies in the FTSE All-Share ..read more

First, an apology. I haven't written anything for a few weeks, partly because I've been busy reviewing company results during results season, but also because Mrs K has been in and out of hospital. Having other things on my mind seems to have a very detrimental impact on my ability to get my usual long-form posts "out the door", so I'm going to try writing shorter updates more frequently, which should be easier for me to write and easier for you to read. And speaking of (relatively) shorter updates, I recently had something of a lightbulb moment in terms of how I diversify my portfolio of ..read more

After a 13-year experiment with near-zero interest rates, this key driver of UK house prices has, at long last, returned to historically normal levels. This is a seismic shift for the UK housing market and it could be the pin that finally pops the UK’s 20-year property bubble. "A 20-year bubble? Impossible!", I hear you cry. But it's true and, in fact, the seeds of this bubble were sown in the 1980s. The seeds of this housing bubble were sown in the 1980s Although the current UK housing bubble began in 2003, the chain of events that led to this bubble began with the peak of the previous bubble ..read more

The last few years haven't been kind to the UK stock market and the FTSE 250, much like the FTSE 100, has fallen out of favour with all but the hardiest and most dedicated (or stubborn) UK investors. Perhaps now is indeed the time to throw in the towel, sell everything UK-related and move the proceeds into everybody’s favourite index, the S&P 500. On the other hand, two of the best-known investing maxims are to be greedy when others are fearful and to buy when there’s blood in the streets. If those statements are correct, and I think they are, then the deeply negative sentiment that surrou ..read more

The FTSE 100 is the index that everyone loves to hate. It’s full of dinosaur companies from legacy industries like banking, utilities and commodities, and no self-respecting investor would touch it with a barge pole when they can funnel their cash into the much more glamorous and better-performing S&P 500 instead. At least, that’s the mainstream narrative. But there are a few hardy souls who still want to invest in UK stocks and FTSE 100 stocks in particular, and for those investors, monitoring the FTSE 100’s current valuation and forecasting its expected future price can be extremely ..read more