Today is the day I want to write about Johnson and Johnson ($JNJ) and why I’m holding it for the long term. One, it’s a well-established company that cranks out great products that everyone uses, and two it has amazing dividends. For each share of JNJ, you get $4.04 of dividends per year. JNJ hits all the sweet spots for building my $100,000 a year passive income portfolio. Let’s dig a bit deeper as to why.

Building a dividend producing passive income portfolio requires thought, time, and education. Today I’m sharing 5 tips for building a dividend passive income portfolio and how you can figure out the right strategy for you. As I’ve written before, this idea came to me after my wife and I reviewed her 401k at the end of 2020. She had by accident generated a large sum of dividends without even trying.

It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance while the music was played. - Alan Watts I struggled with where to publish this article. Part of me wanted to post this to my regular blog Neural Market Trends because it’s where I’m writing about this particular subject a lot. The other part of me thought it would be best to share it on Medium with a larger audience.

Gamestop ($GME) has been in the news a lot lately and I’ve written three articles about it on Medium. It’s been an amazing thing to watch, the short squeeze that took short-seller Melvin Capital down (allegedly) and how crazy the r/WallStreetBets group is. I admit that I traded on all the activity and I made a tidy profit but I considered my success due to sheer luck and being at the right place at the right time.

I kicked off the first month of the year with good results for passive income. While my investments keep earning me passive income, my thoughts now turn to other hands-off ideas and business ideas to generate more passive income. Let’s recap a few things before we begin. Generating Passive Income doesn’t mean that you don’t have to do any work. Passive Income != Passive Work. Often, I found that there’s a lot of work involved at the beginning to create something that will generate you that passive income you seek in the future.

Today I’m writing a short but important post for myself. It’s to assess how my passive income strategies are working and if I’m on track to building up a $100,000 passive income a year portfolio? Considering I ‘accidentally’ made $800 of dividends last year in my taxable account, I wanted to see if I could build up enough passive income before I retire at 59. Yes, I’m on track to retire by 59!

It’s Saturday, January 30, 2021, and this your Market report. What a crazy week! Stocks had an up and down week, Metals were mixed, and Bitcoin is acting like a rabid lemming looking for a rocket or a cliff. Let’s start with… Gamestop. This week the WallStreetBets Reddit group (r/WSB) came out in force to crush Melvin Capital, a hedge fund that had heavily shorted GME shares. The r/WSB folks decided that this was wrong and created a short squeeze on Melvin’s position.

I continue to collect dividend producing stocks and ETFs on my journey to generate $100,000 a year in Passive Income. Earlier this month I picked up $RYLD, another covered call writing ETF that invests primarily in the Russell 2000. This one has a higher Beta though, so I’m taking on more risk but I’ve kept my initial purchase small. Stock Price RYLD is trading at its all-time highs. Everyone is thinking the Bull Market is getting a bit long in the tooth and are starting to wonder when the Biden bump will fade away.

It’s Saturday, January 23, 2021, and this your Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, and Stock Market report. What a week! Stock market indices close near all time highs, Bitcoin got clobbered earlier in the week, and Gold and Silver market rebound slightly. Stock markets rallied last week, buoyed by the incoming Biden Administration and its shift to taking the Covid19 pandemic seriously. Gold and Silver had price gains but the charts continue to show a slow slide to the downside.

My quest continues to earn $100,000 passive income in a year. Supporting my strategy is $QYLD, a monthly dividend producing ETF that uses a Covered Call strategy by owning and selling Nasdaq 100 stocks. It’s not one for the faint of heart, but it fits with my passive income strategy and I went long. There are two things that jump out at me risk wise. For my readers, I’ve written covered calls before, and they’re a great strategy to amp up your returns.

It’s Saturday, January 16, 2021, and this your Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, and Stock Market report. The markets take a pause this week to catch their breath! Gold and Silver drop this week, Bitcoin sells off from record highs, and the Dow Jones / Nasdaq / S&P500 pull back from recent highs. The markets are entering a consolidation phase with profit-taking happening in the stock markets and possibly Bitcoin. We expect more of this in the coming week as Biden Administration takes over.

I added $GILT to my passive income portfolio at the beginning of 2021. I did it because the ex-dividend date was on 1/8/2021 and I saw that it had a low price with a history of big dividend payouts. Albeit it is a short dividend history. I’ve written that my goal is to build up a passive income portfolio. My measure of success will be when I generate a $100,000 a year income, and right now GILT is part of that strategy.

It’s Saturday, January 9, 2021, and this your Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, and Stock Market report. What a week! With the Capitol riots in DC - incited by the outgoing Trump administration - many anticipated the markets to fall. Instead, they all charged higher closing at all-time highs! The Stock Market likes the incoming Biden administration because more stimulus is coming. Bitcoin rallied to another record this week breaking and closing above $40,000 a coin.

I spent the first week of 2021 reacquainting myself with Dividend Reinvesting and I’ve concluded that it makes a ton of sense for someone like me. Retirement isn’t here yet but I can see it coming on the horizon. I’d need to think about stabilizing my investments against volatility and start thinking of long term income. When I first started investing I put a small amount of money in Dividend Reinvestment Plans (still long INTC, thank you very much) and focused on growth inside my retirement accounts.

Happy New Year! It’s Friday January 1, 2021 and this your Gold, Silver, and Bitcoin market report! Markets are closed today. Gold closed up +1.89% this week to $1,893.09. Silver also closed higher, up +1.97% to $26.33. Bitcoin had another spectacular week, closing the 2020 year at $29,001.72. Gold Chart Gold closed the year closer to the $1,900 level contrary to our call to be closer to the $1,800 level.

As 2020 was ending I took some time to look at our 401k balances. This was a good year for our investments, all things considered, but one thing surprised me. There was a line item for “dividend’s earned” and it was quite a large number. My wife’s 401k earned more dividends than what I made as a salary in my first year out of college! This got me thinking about a passive investing strategy that I first read about decades ago.

2020! What a crazy year! We had the Covid19 pandemic, major economic shocks, two big IPO’s in the immediate ‘AI’ space, and lots of new machine learning libraries and innovation. Right now there are so many startups in so many different niche markets or services that it’s hard to count. I’ll highlight the ones that I stumbled across. First is Spell.ml. A buddy of mine ended up there and clued me into what they do.

I travel a lot for work, or rather I used to until Covid19 hit. My last work related trip was to Florida to a convention on Robotic Process Automation (RPA). I stayed in a beautiful Hilton Hotel near a marina with a great resturant and bar. I’ve been a long time Hilton Honors member and use the AMEX credit card a lot to gain points, status, and rewards. My Hilton Honors came in handy when my family and I were stranded overnight in Miami because flights were cancelled due to a nasty storm.