Investing in dividend growth stocks is a long-term proposition. One of the beauties of following a dividend growth strategy is that you don't have to watch your portfolio or the market on a daily basis. For the most part, daily, monthly and yearly movements are just noise in the system.

My normal practice is to refresh my analytical spreadsheets each Friday with updated price information on the 230+ stocks that I follow. Even then, I don't normally look at the value of my portfolio or the performance of individual stocks.

However, each quarter I update my income portfolio's performance and benchmark it against the S&P 500 and other portfolios. At that time I will look at performance of individual stocks to understand the overall performance the portfolio.

Saturday, I updated my Income Portfolio's performance for the second quarter. Building on that, here are my income portfolio's top and bottom 5 performers for the year, through June 30, 2014:

Top Performers

#5. Intel Corporation (INTC)
Intel Corporation is the world's largest manufacturer of microprocessors, the central processing units of PCs, and also produces other semiconductor products.
Yield: 3.0% | 6-Month Return: 46.7%

#4. Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO)
Cisco Systems, Inc. offers a complete line of routers and switching products that connect and manage communications among local and wide area computer networks employing a variety of protocols.
Yield: 3.1% | 6-Month Return: 49.1%

#3. General Dynamics (GD)
General Dynamics is the world's fourth largest military contractor and also one of the world's biggest makers of corporate jets.
Yield: 2.1% | 6-Month Return: 51.8%

#2. ConocoPhillips Co. (COP)
ConocoPhillips Co. is one of the largest independent oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) companies in the world, COP spun off its downstream assets in May 2012.
Yield: 3.2% | 6-Month Return: 53.0%

#1. National Retail Properties, Inc. (NNN)
National Retail Properties, Inc. is an equity real estate investment trust that invests in high-quality, freestanding retail properties subject to long-term net leases with major retail tenants.
Yield: 4.3% | 6-Month Return: 48.4%

Bottom Performers

#5 Emerson Electric Co. (EMR)
Emerson Electric Co. designs and supplies product technology, and delivers engineering services and solutions to a wide range of industrial, commercial and consumer markets around the world.
Yield: 2.5% | 6-Month Return: -8.4%

#4. AFLAC Incorporated (AFL)
Aflac Incorporated provides supplemental health and life insurance in Japan (78% of pretax operating profits) and the U.S. Products are marketed at work sites and help fill gaps in primary coverage.
Yield: 2.3% | 6-Month Return: -11.2%

#3. Owens & Minor, Inc. (OMI)
Owens & Minor Inc. is a leading domestic distributor of medical and surgical supplies to the acute care market, a health care supply chain management company, and a direct-to-consumer (DTC) supplier of testing and monitoring supplies for diabetes.
Yield: 2.9% | 6-Month Return: -11.8%


#2. Cincinnati Financial Corp. (CINF)
Cincinnati Financial Corp. is an insurance holding company that primarily markets property and casualty coverage. It also conducts life insurance and asset management operations.
Yield: 3.6% | 6-Month Return: -12.7%

#1. Community Trust Bank Corp. (CTBI)
Community Trust Bank Corp. owns and operates Community Trust Bank, Inc. of Pikeville, KY, which provides commercial banking services in Kentucky and West Virginia; and a trust company.
Yield: 3.3% | 6-Month Return: -28.6%

To avoid short-term anomalies, I excluded stocks that I did not own on January 1, 2014 from the above lists. Investing in dividend growth stocks is a long-term proposition, but sometimes it is nice to see that our portfolio is performing well, in addition to collecting higher dividends each month.