Value Investing News

With all the other investment strategies out there, why should investors consider dividend or income investing? There are a multitude of reasons to follow a dividend growth strategy. These include: investment stability, security of cash, continuous feedback, potential higher returns, low maintenance, et. al.

When stock prices start dropping, our primal instinct of flight kicks in and we want to sell. In many cases that is the time to be buying. As a long-term buy-and-hold investor, most of my evaluation efforts are aimed at determining when to buy a stock. However, sometimes selling a stock is the right thing to do, and we need to be adept at identifying those times.

Skechers USA (SKX) is the popular shoe brand whose stock has seen a dramatic fall over the past year from nearly $45 to $14. Is it ready to rise again?

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A photograph captures a moment in time. Seconds after the flash dims a tree could have fallen on the object of the photo or the sad looking man in the photo could have been told he just won a million dollars.

Over the next several weeks I plan to look at different sectors that have traditionally been very friendly to dividend investors. Each of these sectors have attributes that make the companies in them potentially desirable to long-term buy-and-hold dividend growth investors. Understanding these attributes will hopefully help us to select the very best companies for our income portfolios.

Searching for the best dividend stocks in the US...starting with the entire US listed stock universe and filtering down to 18 companies that have good dividends, business performance and conservative balance sheet and valuation

Dividends from a quality, well-diversified portfolio are much more predictable than capital gains and best of all, they are passive. You don’t have to do anything, they just show up in your brokerage account each quarter. Inflation? Not to worry, the good companies routinely raise their dividends well in excess of the inflation rate.

To succeed as a dividend growth investor you must identify and purchase stocks with sustainable dividend growth. Put another way, targeted companies must be both capable and willing to grow their dividends. Obviously, we can not look into the future and see who will and will not perform.

The dividend aristocrats list includes companies which have increased dividends for over 25 years in a row. It is equally weighted and re-balanced once an year. Over the past 3,5 and 7 years the index of elite dividend stocks has managed to outperform the S&P 500 by 5%, 3.7% and 4.40% respectively.