Dividend growth rate is the percentage increase in yearly dividend payouts over time.  While many income investors concentrate on dividend yield (the amount of a corporation’s current earnings that are being paid out as dividends), for long term dividend investors and those using the dividend discount model it’s dividend growth that will show the most [...]

Index investing has always been a hassle free way to invest in the total returns on the stock market.  Index investors argue that so few actively managed mutual funds beat the S&P 500 and similar indexes so why not just invest in the index?  You’ll not only see lower management fees but also less stress [...]

A public corporation exists to do one thing – provide profits for its shareholders.  For corporations who pass a portion of their earnings on to shareholders in the form of dividends those earnings can either be used for short term payments in the form of quarterly dividends or long term payments in the form of [...]

The dogs of the down investment strategy is based on choosing dividend paying stocks with the highest dividend yield.  Each year on January 1, the ten highest dividend yield companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) are chosen and their dividend stocks make up the dogs of the dow index for the upcoming year. The [...]

A corporation can do several things with its earnings.  We’re interested in companies that distribute those earnings to shareholders in the form of dividends but earnings can also be used in an attempt to grow the company to maintain or increase market share and, through that, increase future earnings. One of the non-dividend and non-growth [...]

The internet is full of stock screens that let you sort dividend paying stocks by a wide variety of criteria including dividend yield, dividend amount, stock price, earnings per share, and market cap. Many dividend investors look exclusively at dividend yield (as in the dividend discount model) but, if you’re looking for long term dividend [...]

A corporation exists to provide profits for the owners of its stock – its shareholders.  The primary way that corporations provide these profits is by operating their business(es) in such a way as to generate profits and using those profits to grow future profits. Wrapped up in this pursuit of profits is the assumption that the corporation [...]