Value Investing News

I couldn't begin to estimate how many different stocks are traded around the world. Like everything else, there are many participants, but few players. Though the population of stocks may be large, there are only a precious few that are worthy dividend stocks. When spending my time looking for worthy investments, there are four primary places I look:

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Have you ever wondered just where are all the get-rich-now infomercial millionaires? I know several people who have purchased one or more of these get-rich-now kits, but I don't know of anyone who actually got rich from purchasing the kit. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates didn't build their fortunes with a get-rich-now kit. They worked hard built it steadily over time.

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In everything we do, we always want to be the best or be associated with the best. You never hear fans yelling, ‘We’re number 2, we’re number 2′, while holding two fingers in the air. The same is true when selecting dividend stocks. One attribute of the very best dividend stocks is a long history of consecutive dividend increases.

Most investors are not surprised when a company cuts its dividend. They saw the early warning signs well in advance of the actual cut. Here are three signs that a company is heading toward a dividend cut:

When analyzing the dividend increases announced for the past week, I noticed that the data confirms my expectations. Most of the higher yielding stocks that announced dividend increases have had slow distributions growth, with some exceptions. Master Limited Partnerships seem to be on a roll this month.

Any company could afford to boost distributions in a single year. Any type of business could also have a high yield, especially if it distributes all of its cash flows to shareholders. It takes a special kind of a business model to afford a proper balance between investing back into the business and distributing excess profits to shareholders.

For dividend growth investors, there are certain attributes of investments that are more relevant than others, such as yield and dividend growth. To illustrate the power of dividend growth consider that an investment’s yield-on-cost will double every 5 years if they grow their dividend by 15%/year or 7 years at 10%/year or 14 years at 5%/year.

Last year I introduced the Stock Ideas list and it has proven to be immensely popular. The list consists of Dividend Aristocrats, US Broad Dividend Achievers and U.S. Dividend Champions. Here are some highlights on this year’s changes: