Podcast 197 - 10 OUTSTANDING STOCKS: BCE INC, MPLX, EMERA, TELUS, WESTERN MIDSTREAM, ENERGY TRANSFER, NORTHLAND POWER, ETC Artwork

Safe Dividend Investing

In 2000, I lost $300,000 in mutual funds that an investment advisor had put my lifesavings into.... I lost it because I had entrusted it to an industry that does not educate investors nor encourage them to look closely at what that industry is doing with their money..... I set out to find a better, safer way to invest..... My podcasts relate to what I learned in creating a generous, reliable income and in growing my wealth.... A few of the more important lessons I learned and explore are:.... (1) It is critical that you become a self-directed investor.....(2) If you can not easily measure the risk and potential in an investment, then do not invest in it. This excludes from your portfolio bundled investment devices, like mutual funds, ETFs and Index funds,..... (3) Financially strong companies who have paid “good dividends” for decades will continue to stay strong and continue to pay good dividends because it is both part of their "character" and in their executives selfish interest.....(4) Diversification is critical. Investing equally in the best 20 strong dividend stocks is the ideal.....A portfolio of 20 limits your risk in any one stock to 5% of your wealth..... No matter how strong you think a stock is, do not fall in love with it..... I have lived very well off my steady dividend income for 18 years, through two market crashes and one pandemic. I have watched my portfolio’s capital more than triple from where I started, despite taking out a generous dividend income every year to live on... In charts, for my second investment book,(Safer Better Dividend Investing), I spent months scoring all 628 dividend stocks paying dividends of 6% or greater traded on the TSX, NYSE and the NASDAQ. I discovered dozens of stocks that can provide not only a generous dividend income but outstanding capital growth.....Financial independence is realizable for careful, patient, dividend investors.

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Podcast 197 - 10 OUTSTANDING STOCKS: BCE INC, MPLX, EMERA, TELUS, WESTERN MIDSTREAM, ENERGY TRANSFER, NORTHLAND POWER, ETC

November 30, 2024 • Ian Duncan MacDonald • Season 1 • Episode 197

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Welcome to this week's Save Dividend Investing's podcast. For greater accuracy, you may want to go to the printed transcript provided with this podcast for the list of 5 outstanding US stocks and 5 outstanding Canadians stocks identified this week. It is interesting to see how scoring these 10 stocks revealed their hidden strengths and weaknesses that were not initially evident.

The first 190 podcasts answered questions from listeners and readers of my publications. Not wanting to repeat the same material that had already been covered, these last podcasts have dealt with identifying interesting stocks that seemed to worth considering as possible acquisitions.

IAN
imacd@informus.ca

SIX INVESTMENT GUIDE BOOKS BY IAN DUNCAN MACDONALD,
ARE AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON.COM / KINDLE BOOKS
THE FOLLOWING ARE THE 2 LATEST:

(1) CANADIAN HIGH DIVIDEND INVESTING -
In this 325-page book, learn how to select, purchase and build a portfolio of 20 Canadian strong dividend stocks. Summary records of 215 stocks are sorted in multiple ways, and each stock's unique page provides detailed scoring data and 24 years of price and dividend trend data. Released September 23.

(2) NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE'S 106 BEST HIGH DIVIDEND STOCKS -
In this 334-page book, there is a 2-page report for each company scoring 11 data elements. It also lists 23 years of historical share price and dividend payouts so that investors can judge the stock's reliability. Released December 2022.

A TRANSCRIPT OF THIS PODCAST IS AVAILABLE.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON IAN'S 6 INVESTMENT BOOKS, 3 NOVELS, PAINTINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS AND DIGITAL ART VISIT www.informus.ca

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author, Artist, Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
imacd@informus.ca

Podcast 197 - 30 Nov 2024

Safe Dividend Investing-

Greetings to listeners all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 197, on November 30 of 2024. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald.

In the 4,000 minutes that were recorded for the first 190 Podcasts of Safe Dividend Investing, you will find answers to hundreds of investment questions. A written transcript is provided with each podcast.

Today, I have sifted through 17,000 of stocks traded in North America to bring to your attention this week’s five most outstanding U.S. stocks and five Canadian stocks.

Each of these stocks has been scored. Their score appears along with the five criteria that were used in finding them. Please note that the highest score I have ever calculated, out of the thousands I have scored, was a 78. The lowest was a 5. I personally prefer stocks scoring over 50 in my portfolio.

If you have not already obtained the stock scoring software that I supply free to those who purchase my investment guidebooks, please go to my website www.informus.ca where you can see the eleven factors used to score each stock. All my books describe exactly how a score is calculated and why these eleven criteria are important. The software can be used to quickly and easily score any stock trading on any stock exchange.

THE TEN OUTSTANDING US & CANADIAN STOCKS FOR 30 NOV 2024

The following 5 US & 5 Canadian stocks qualified because they exceeded the following criteria.

(1) A trading volume exceeding 1 million shares.

(2) A dividend yield percent exceeding 5%.

(3) A weekly price gain exceeding 4% in the US and 1% in Canada.

(4) A share price exceeding $5.21.

(5) An Operating Margin Exceeding 20%.

The 5 US stocks were:

1. WESTERN MIDSTREAM (WES : NYSE)...SCORE = 66

2. MPLX LP (MPLX : NYSE)……................. SCORE = 68

3. ENTERPRISE PRODUCTS (EPD :NYSE) …SCORE = 63

4. ENERGY TRANSFER LP (ET : NYSE)………SCORE = 60

5. BLOOMIN BRANDS (BLMN : NYSE)……....SCORE = 36

The 5 Canadian stocks were:

1. BCE INC (BCE : TSX)………………….....SCORE = 43

2. NORTHLAND POWER (NPI : TSX)…….SCORE = 55

3. TELUS CORP (T : TSX) ……………………SCORE = 53

4. ALGONQUIN POWER (AQN : TSX)…...SCORE = 56

5. EMERA INC (EMA : TSX) …………………SCORE= 64

While scoring these US and Canadian stocks I found the following interesting:

Once again Emera whose share price was $53.42 was again the most expensive stock and Algonquin Power was the least expensive at $6.95. Emera was the only stock that had also appeared last week.

Four years ago, Emera Inc was still the most expensive stock at $54.43 but Enterprise Products was the least expensive at $6.18

The highest Book Value was for Emera at $42.50 and the lowest was Bloomin Brands at $4.70.

Energy Transfer had 9 analysts recommending it as a buy. The only stock with strong buy recommendations was Northland Power with two strong buy recommendations.

The highest dividend yield percentage was for BCE Inc with 10.53% and the lowest was Algonquin Power with 5.24%

The highest operating margin was Western Midstream at 54.95% and the lowest was for Bloomin Brands at 1.35%.

The highest price to earnings ratio was 411.4 for BCE Inc while Algonquin Power had the lowest at 10.3. ratio. Bloomin Brands had a ratio of minus 151.5.

The stock with the highest trading volume was Energy Transfer with 16,083,808 traded on November 29th.

The stock with the highest IDM score was MPLX with a score of 68 and the lowest score was Blooming Brands with a 36.

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Scoring stocks gives you an objective measure to compare and judge the potential and value of each stock. It is strongly recommended just before you purchase any stock that you always do your due diligence and score the stock to make sure you have a good grasp of its current strength.

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BACKGROUND:

For those who are listening to the Safe Dividend Investing podcast for the first time and are not familiar with the initial 190 podcasts that answered hundreds of questions or with my six investment books that have guided investors for many years, the following is overview of my approach to investing.

As I see it, investment companies work hard at convincing the public that they could never invest profitably without allowing their industry to nibble away at your life savings for the rest of your life. Their objective is to transfer as much of your money from your pocket to their pocket. Thus, you should question every recommendation they make.

The reality is that if you are patient and disciplined you can easily grow your portfolio as a self-directed investor without sharing any of your hard-earned money with the investment industry parasites. The following is the easiest, most uncomplicated way for someone with limited investment knowledge to safely earn far more money by investing in stocks than they would earn elsewhere.

I knew I had to find a better way to invest when I had a $300,000 loss in the mutual funds an investment advisor had put my life savings into. That mutual fund money was supposed to have been safe and take care of me for the next 30 years.

I was now on my own and I knew little about investing. However, I now knew that mutual funds were not safe and the annual percentage I was charged by the financial institution every year would eventually have added up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Money that could be earning me money and not the financial institution.

My research quickly showed me that most investors are speculators who see their wealth destroyed when their bet on a stock increasing in price falls below their purchase price. This loss in share value occurs because speculative stock sellers are unable to attract any bids for their stock from buyers at their current selling price. They keep lowering the selling price of their bid until a stock buying speculator thinks it is low enough to gamble on buying it. Their belief is the price will now go up. Speculators are encouraged to gamble this way by the investment industry who benefit from the trading activity and by the media who seek to publicize dramatic price swings to increase their advertising audience.

With such speculative churning in the stock market, it became obvious to me that no one can accurately predict future share prices.

That epiphany was 24 years ago. I soon became a successful self-directed investor by carefully selecting and buying 20 strong, high dividend paying stocks through my bank’s online investment platform. The total fee I will ever pay for buying each stock was $9.

Why have I never been disappointed in my income or my capital gain from my 20 stocks? Because my financially strong stocks have paid ever increasing dividend payments out of their profits.

While share prices are determined by impulsive speculators making guesses, my dividend payouts are the result of the wise revenue and expense decisions made by the experienced managers of the companies whose shares I own. Looking at free records, that go back for decades, I can easily see before I buy a share how share prices have had almost zero impact on a stock’s dividend payouts.

It seems few speculators consider the financial strength of a company or its dividend payouts. They are blinded by the often-futile objective of trying to guess how high the current frantic speculative bidding on a supposed hot stock will take its share price. This is not a winning strategy.

What do I do when a market crash comes along, and the share price of my stocks, like all stocks, may drop by 50%? I do nothing because I live off my dividends. They are paid the same as they have always been paid by these strong stocks. I know that eventually the share prices of my 20 financially strong stocks will recover and grow to new record high values. I relax, wait and pay my bills with my dividend dollars.

To me a market downturn is a great time to buy more of my 20 strong stocks with my surplus dividend cash. Despite my lack of interest in share prices, the value of my total portfolio has grown by several multiples into the 7 figures.

I go for years without selling any of the stocks in my portfolio while realizing a dividend income of 6 to 8 percent each year from the portfolio. At the same time, I often see the share prices of these strong companies increasing by about 12% each year. These share price increases often cause the company’s managers to proudly increase dividend payouts to maintain their historically high dividend yield percentages. That keeps my dividend payouts well ahead of inflation.

To help me quickly sort out the best financially strong stocks with high dividends, I created stock scoring software for myself, which, on request, I now send free to readers who have bought any of my 6 investment books available at Amazon.com. The software has helped many make better, logical, objective, stock selections easier and faster.

If you wish to learn more about this way of investing, go to http://www.informus.ca

Until next week.

Ian Duncan MacDonald

Questions and comments can be sent to ( imacd@informus.ca)