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.
Safe Dividend Investing
Podcast 220 - This week's Outstanding Stocks - ENBRIDGE, CUBESMART, PEMBINA, IGM FINANCIAL
Welcome to Podcast 220 of Safe Dividend Investing on May 3rd of 2025.
Be sure to visit the written transcript attached this podcast to find more information on each stock that was scored.
You may also want to visit Podcast 210 where in that printed transcript, you will find Chapter 4 from my investment guidebooks. It explains, in easily understood language, how and why the IDM stock scoring system works. The IDM stock scoring software that I provide to those who purchase my investment guide books is derived from this chapter. The software makes scoring stocks faster and easier.
The first 190 Safe Dividend Investing podcasts answered hundreds of questions about stocks that I had received from my listeners and readers. Starting with Podcast 191 the the weekly podcasts have dealt with identifying those 10 dividend stocks who that week had exceptional share price growth on the New York or Toronto stock exchanges. Their quick growth may make them worth considering as possible portfolio acquisitions.
At www.informus.ca for information you can learn more about the benefits of my six investment guide books: Income and Wealth from Self-directed Investing, New York Stock Exchange's 106 Best High Dividend Stocks, Canadian High Dividend Handbook, American High Dividend Handbook, Safer Better Dividend Investing and Canadian High Dividend Investing. All books are immediately available at Amazon.com as e-books or within a day or two as print books. The books save you many hours in building an effective portfolio of financially strong companies paying high dividends.
Direct any questions about the books or the scoring software to imacd@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
Safe Dividend Investing- 3 May 2025
Podcast 220
Greetings to listeners all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 220, on May 3rd `of 2025. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald.
In the first 190 Podcasts of Safe Dividend Investing, you can find answers to hundreds of investment questions.
Starting with Podcast 191 the podcast format was changed. I now bring to your attention each week, the 5 U.S. and the 5 Canadian high dividend stocks whose share prices gained the most this week. This involves using selectors to bring the number of qualifying stocks down to the ten that qualify.
All 10 stocks are scored and the detailed scoring matrix for each stock appears in the written transcript of each podcast. A stock’s score is calculated out of a possible 100. The highest score I have ever calculated out of the thousands I have scored is an 86. The lowest was 3. The higher the score the stronger the stock. I personally prefer stocks scoring over 50 in my portfolio. However, it is important that a high score also be accompanied by a history of rising share prices and dividend payouts to be exceptionally attractive.
Note: In Podcast 210 you can see how scores are calculated for each data element and why these scoring elements were chosen. This information can allow you to manually score any stock you encounter.
U.S STOCK SELCTORS USED THIS WEEK
Only common shares are considered in selecting stocks. Preferred shares are ignored.
A dividend yield percent selector of 5% or more was first applied.
The next selector used was the number of shares traded of the company’s stock exceeding I,000,000 shares.
Those remaining stocks with operating margins exceeding 5% was applied.
All remaining stocks with share prices exceeding $25.61 further reduced the numbers.
The final selector was those stocks whose share price gain in the last week exceeded 3%. This left us with the following 5 qualifying US stocks who were then scored
- Crown Castle Inc (CCI) Score 54
- Cubesmart (CUBE) Score 61
- Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (BMY) Score 58
- Lazard Inc (LAZ) 52
- Papa John’s International Inc (PZZA) Score 56
CANADIAN STOCK SELCTORS USED THIS WEEK
Only common shares are considered in selecting stocks. Preferred shares are ignored.
A dividend yield selector of 5% was first applied.
The next selector used was the number of traded shares exceeding 164,000.
Stocks with an operating margins exceeding 5% was used next.
Those share prices exceeding $25.69 further reduced the numbers.
The final selector were stocks whose share price gain in the last week exceeded 1%.
The following 5 qualifying Canadian stocks were then scored using the IDM stock scoring software:
1. South Bow Corporation (SOBO) Score 49
2. Labrador Iron Ore Royalty Corporation (LIF) Score 52.
3. Pembina Pipeline Corporation (PPL) Score 65.
4. Enbridge Inc (ENB) Score 67.
5. IGM Financial Inc (IGM) Score 60.
HIGHS AND LOWS
While scoring these US and Canadian stocks I found the following interesting:
The most expensive stock was < Crown Castle Inc>at <$106.87 >and <Labrador Iron Ore Royalty > was the least expensive at <$29.55 >.
The most buy recommendations by analysts were for <Crown Castle Inc > with<8 > and the least number of recommendations were for <0> for <Labrador Iron Ore Royalty Corp>.
<Only Papa John’s International Inc > had strong buy recommendations with 4 in total>.
The highest Book Value was for<IGM Financial Inc> at <$32.79> and the lowest was for < Papa John’s International Inc > with <a minus $13.16>
The highest number of shares traded was <14 million> by <Bristol-Myers Squibb> and the lowest number was < Labrador Iron Ore Royalty Corp > with <107,274 >.
The highest operating margin was for < Labrador Iron Ore Royalty>> at<75.84%> and the lowest was for <Crown Castle Inc > with a minus <49.35%>.
The best price-to-earnings ratio of <4.0x > was for< Papa John’s International Inc> and the highest was for <Crown Castle Inc > with a < 51.81x>.
The stock with the highest IDM score of <67 > was <Enbridge Inc>. The Lowest score was a <49>for < South Bow Corporation >.
To see all 9 components that made up the scores for each of the 10 companies in this podcast go to the written transcript that is attached to this podcast.
DISPLAY OF US STOCK SCORE CALCULATIONS
S7.16TK = Stock Symbol 1 = Price $ 2 = 4yr ago Price $ 3= $ book value 4= advisor buys # 5= advisor strong buys # 6= div. yield % 7=operating margin % 8 = trade volume # 9 = P/E ratio
STOCK 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8_ _9
| CCI | 106.87 | 183.32 | -0.31 | 8 | 0 | 5.86 | -49.35 | 4M | 51.81
| CUBE | 42.57 | 42.18 | 12.61 | 3 | 0 | 4.89 | 45.31 | 3M | 24.7
| BMY | 50.57 | 64.44 | 8.14 | 5 | 0 | 4.90 | 16.78 | 14M | 19.0
| LAZ | 41.39 | 46.67 | 7.05 | 1 | 0 | 4.83 | 12.78 | 1M | 14.4
| PZZA | 35.69 | 99.35 | -13.16 | 2 | 4 | 5.16 | 16.20 | 1M | 4.0
DISPLAY OF CANADIAN SCORE CALCULATIONS
STK = Stock Symbol 1 = Price $ 2= 4yr ago Price $ 3= $ book value 4= advisor buys # 5= advisor strong buys # 6= div. yield % 7=operating margin % 8 = trade volume # 9 = P/E ratio
STOCK 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
| SOBO | 35.23 | 0 | 17.34 | 1 | 0 | 8.17 | 37.47 | 1M | 16.8
| LIF | 29.55 | 42.92 | 10.05 | 0 | 0 | 6.77 | 75.84 | 100K | 10.8
| PPL | 53.98 | 38.06 | 30.14 | 6 | 0 | 5.11 | 30.89 | 1M | 18.0
| ENB | 64.73 | 48.09 | 30.26 | 6 | 0 | 5.82 | 18.04 | 5M | 27.5
| IGM | 43.89 | 44.79 | 32.79 | 2 | 0 | 5.13 | 32.25 | 165K | 11.2
The weekly recording of the outstanding share price gain stocks in both the US and Canada started on November 23rd of 2024. The highest scoring stock recorded since then has been Civitas Resources with a score of 86. The lowest score recorded was a 34 by both Minerosa SA and Fiera Capital . Over these few weeks Enbridge, Endeavour Mining and Telus have each appeared in the weekly podcast several times.
Be sure to always go to the written transcript that accompanies each podcast so you can see the charts showing how the scores for each week’s 10 stocks were calculated. Visit www.informus.ca for information on my investment books and scoring software
Until next week’s podcast this is Ian Duncan MacDonald encouraging you to become a successful self-directed investor.
Any questions and comments can be sent to imacd@informus.ca.
FEAR OF LOSING ALL YOUR INVESTMENT MONEY
Many who would like to invest in the stock market do not because they fear losing all the money that they would invest. When asked how I overcame my fear of investing in stocks, I assure them that it is impossible to lose all your money in the stock market if you carefully invest the way I do. This means investing equally in 20 financially strong companies, paying dividends greater than 5% with long histories of ever rising share prices and dividend payouts.
Yes, a few of the share prices of the 20 stocks I have purchased may drop below my purchase price for periods of time while others may double or triple in value at the same time. What is important is the portfolio’s total results not its individual stocks.
My lack of fear of losing all my money is based on my fifty years in developing commercial risk scoring systems. They predicted which of the 2 million businesses in my database would fail to pay their suppliers. I saw that while 20% may have been slow in paying over 95% of the 2,000,000 companies eventually paid their suppliers in full.
The typical supplier had thousands of customers. The chances of a large percentage of their customers not paying them was so small that when it did happen the supplier would write the account off to bad debt and see it as a cost of doing business. They recognized that if they had zero bad debt that their credit granting policies were too tight and they were losing out in making sales. Their extreme caution would ultimately hurt their profits. In the same way you cannot make a profitable income from stocks if you are not invested.
While they were extending perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit to a new customer, these commercial risk managers had very limited data to consult in making their risk decisions. A stock investor has access to a hundred times more free, easily accessible data to base their risk decisions on.
All my publications and my stock scoring software are devoted to showing investors where to find and use this free, easily accessed risk information on stocks. It takes only a few minutes to do a basic risk assessment of a stock.
Why does stock risk analysis work? It works because human beings are creatures of habit. Human beings make the revenue and expense decisions that result in a company making a profit. Dividends are paid out of profits. By looking at the trends of share prices and dividend payouts of a company over many years, you can see the engrained profitable habits of companies.
Unfortunately, the perfect stock does not exist. You must still use some judgment to pick what you believe are the “best” dividend stocks for your portfolio. There is always some compromise between maximizing financial strength and maximizing dividend income.
The stock scoring software I supply to my book readers is a big help in making a stock value compromise. I believe that the only way anyone could possibly lose all their money on the stock market is because their portfolios were not sufficiently diversified, and they did not spend the few minutes it takes to determine the strength of each stock they added to their portfolio.
BACKGROUND
Investment companies work hard to convince the public that they could never invest profitably without allowing the financial industry to nibble away at a client’s life savings for the rest of their lives. The objective of advisors is to transfer as much money from your pocket to the pocket of the financial institution that employs them.
I knew 24 years ago that I had to find a better way to invest when I saw a $300,000 loss in the mutual funds an investment advisor had put my life savings into. Since then, I have learned if you are patient and disciplined you can easily grow your portfolio as a self-directed investor without paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees over your lifetime to the investment industry parasites. This is a drain on the money invested to make you money.
My early 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 and they sell it. With such speculative churning encouraged by the investment industry, it seemed obvious to me that no one can accurately predict future share prices.
I became a successful self-directed investor by carefully selecting and buying 20 strong, high dividend stocks through my bank’s online self-directed investment platform.
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 company profits.
While share prices are determined by impulsive speculators making guesses, my dividend payouts are the result of the wise revenue and expense decisions of the experienced managers of the companies whose shares I own.
By looking at free, accessible records that go back for decades, anyone can easily see before they buy a share how that stock’s fluctuating share price has had little or no impact on a stock’s rising dividend payouts.
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 relax and do nothing because I live off my dividends. Those dividends are paid throughout the crash as regularly as they have always been paid through previous stock market crashes. During the crash I pay my monthly bills with my dividend income just as I have always done.
The idea the investment industry promotes that your portfolio must shrink in value after you retire is meant to scare you into buying more of their investment products such as expensive annuities. The value of my portfolio has grown by several multiples into the 7 figures and is still growing.
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 of the value of my portfolio. Most years the share prices of my 20 strong companies can also increase by about 12%. These rising share prices often cause the company’s managers to proudly increase their dividend payouts to maintain their stock’s historically high dividend yield percentages. That has kept my dividend income well ahead of inflation. You too can also build a strong dividend portfolio just like I did.