In my last post, I discussed about two important but overlooked aspects about dividend investing. Today, I am discussing few tidbit that I have learnt over the years.
Dividends provide stability in your portfolio: Companies that are generating profitable cash and sharing with shareholders are the ones that do not go bust. Even in down market they give you cash dividends. While your portfolio’s capital values go down, your dividends are positive return to you portfolio. I crave for such a scenario. I position myself to make sure I have enough cash to buy such companies at lower valuations. I see downturn such as early 2009 as an incredible buying opportunity.
Dividends to investors cannot be manipulated: Companies demonstrate profit in their books which fuels the market price. But can you as an investor spend company profits? Profits can be generated from financial engineering, ROC or ROE can be engineering, but cash flow from operations or dividends to shareholders cannot be manipulated. As an investor you need cash to spend, and not company profits. The company you work for gives you cash (and not profit statement). Will you be willing to work for profit statement? Probably not!
There are many different styles, approach, and methods of investing. Many individual investors focus on trading (swing, positional, momentum, speculation, technicals etc.), while many others focus of investing (value, growth, blend, etc), and still many others on special situations (opportunistic, arbitrages, etc). In addition, there are quite a few individual investors that attempt at combination of trading and investing. Similar to glass being half full or half empty, I believe every style has its own pros and cons’ depending upon in what context one is looking at it. Individuals have to figure out what works best for them.
Investing Success Comes from Conviction and Executing Your Ideas
We as individuals focus too much on one or two big time success or multi baggers, but ignore the importance of sustainability and consistency. We fall into the “Chalta hai” trap. Long term success is not built on few multi-baggers. Long term success is built on multiple average successes that are sustainable over time. Continue reading rest of this article…