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 223 - OUTSTANDING STOCKS - TOURMALINE OIL - ENBRIDGE - EMERA - WIDOWS AND INVESTMENT ADVISORS
Welcome to Podcast 223:
This week’s 10 outstanding high dividend stocks are in the attached podcast’s narration and transcript.
5 U.S STOCK SELCTORS USED (1) common shares (2) dividend yield + 5% (3) # shares traded over 1M (4) operating margins +5% (5) share prices + $9.10 (6) weekly share price gain +1%. QUALIFIERS’ STOCK SYMBOLS & THEIR SCORES: (1) MO Score 63 (2) PFE Score 60 (3) TU Score 52 (4) ENB Score 68 (5) RCI Score 61.
5 CANADIAN STOCK SELCTORS (1) common shares (2) dividend yield + 3% (3) # shares traded over 488K (4) operating margins +10% (5) share prices + $37.35 (6) weekly share price gain +1%. QUALIFIERS’ & SCORES (1) EDV Score 54 (2) EMA Score 66 (3) CU Score 54 (4) TOU Score 53 (5) NTR Score 45.
DATA USED FOR STOCK SCORE CALCULATIONS: Stock Symbol (1) Price $ (2) Price 4yrs ago $ (3) Book Value $ (4) Advisor Buys # (5) Advisor Strong Buys # (6) Dividend. Yield % (7)Operating Margin % (8) Share Volume Traded # (9) Price/Earnings Ratio.
US SCORE CALCULATIONS (K=thousand M=million)
STOCK 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
MO| 59.74|49.22|-1.32| 3|0| 6.83| 43.69 |5M | 10.0x
PFE| 23.32| 38.73|15.56| 4 |1| 7.38| 14.71|35M |16.9x
TU |16.13| 22.56 | 7.56 | 5 | 0 |7.51| 14.69| 2M | 28.1x
ENB|63.26| 46.47|30.26| 7| 0 | 5.96| 17.41 | 7M | 23.3x
RCI |26.09| 51.65 | 14.13| 5 | 3 | 5.58| 22.40|1M | 10.9x
CANADIAN SCORE CALCULATIONS
| EDV | 42.25 |29.00 |15.23 | 6 | 1 | 3.88 |22.791| 350K|-7.37x
| EMA| 61.61 | 56.50| 44.86| 5 | 0 | 4.71 | 21.58 | 1M | 20.9x
| CU| 38.07 | 34.90 |25.94 | 0 | 0 | 4.81 |28.16 |350K |26.2x
| TOU |64.00 |29.43 |41.60 | 6 | 0 | 3.13 | 31.68 |1M |19.0x
| NTR | 81.88 |75.13 |68.28 | 8 | 0 | 3.66 | 6.48 |1M | 55.9x
For information on my 6 investment books go to 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
Safe Dividend Investing
24 May 2025
Podcast 223
Greetings to listeners all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 223, on May 24th of 2025. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald.
Before I reveal this week’s 5 outstanding high dividend US stocks and 5 Canadian stocks whose share prices gained the most this week, I would like to make a comment.
It may come as a surprise to some of you that we do not live forever. At 80 you will look back at the friendships that you and your spouse may have enjoyed for 30, 40 even 60 years and notice something is missing. Most of the husbands have disappeared. They have gone to their reward leaving behind wives.
Often these wives have had little involvement in managing the family’s accumulated savings and wealth. Their husbands did them no favor by sheltering them from investment decisions and from those charming investment advisors who will now appear offering to help these widows to sort out how to invest that money that is supposed to shelter them in their remaining years.
The reality is that investment advisors are there to invest this money to benefit themselves, not the widow. When the widow asks how much the investment advisor’s services will cost, the advisors are taught to evasively answer, “So little that it will not even be noticed”. For example, they will usually “recommend” that 60% of the money should go into mutual funds and 40% into bonds. They of course will assure the widow that they can recommend excellent funds to spare the widow from having to pick a mutual funds from thousands of mutual funds that are available. The advisor will not mention that they are recommending a mutual fund their employer is pushing that week with a nice incentive attached to it for the advisor.
With honeyed words the will assure her that this unique fund is “safe” and it will “grow so much in value” that the widow will never have to fear outliving her money. The advisors know exactly how much income selling this fund will put in their pocket, just as they also know that the future value of any mutual fund cannot be accurately predicted. To realize an income from these funds they will be told all they have to do is sell off 4% of their mutual funds each year from their shrinking portfolio.
To give the widow at least some assurance of a reliable income, they will scare the widow into buying bonds. The widow will be paying commissions to buy these bonds and thousands of dollars when they are bought and sold. Interestingly you can buy $50,000 worth of shares in financially strong company paying a reliable 6% annual dividend for a $10 transaction fee. Compare this to the thousands in commission you could pay to buy $50,000 worth of bonds which unlike a stock a bond have zero chance of ever increasing in value.
At one time I was clueless when it came to investing and thought that my investment advisor with decades of investment experience was a trusted friend. With his expert guidance over 3 years I took a loss of $300,000 in the mutual fund portfolio established by him. This loss made me realize that I had to smarten up and learn how to invest safely.
If I was going to lose money, I wanted to at least understand why that money was being lost. Since my background was building commercial risk databases and scoring systems, I created stock scoring software that would allow me to identify financially strong companies who could provide me with a reliable, safe, growing dividend income.
That loss was more than 20 years ago. My portfolio has grown by many multiples since then and provided me with that an ever growing very generous annual income. Once that portfolio of 20 financially strong stocks with long histories of rising share prices and high dividend payouts was established, I found it required little of my time.
About 8 years ago an 80-year-old widow who had helped me with a lobbying project asked me for help with her portfolio. She too had had a loss hundreds of thousands of dollars within a few years.
For 3 months I educated her on investing. She had no problem using my stock scoring software to build herself a strong stock portfolio that almost immediately doubled her previous monthly income. Over time she regained the hundreds of thousands of dollars she had lost.
I had been appalled when I saw how her investment advisor had been bleeding her portfolio every month. This was no fly-by-night bucket shop advisor. He was an advisor employed by one of the largest banks.
In establishing her new self-directed portfolio she decided to transfer her portfolio to another of the top banks. Despite my warnings of staying away from investment advisors, she again became involved with an investment advisors at the new bank, this time with a title of Vice President. It took her months to regain full control of the money she had transferred to the new bank.
Now with total control of her investments she has gained so much confidence in investing that she now tells me she can go for weeks without looking at her portfolio.
That widow pushed me to write a book that described in detail what I had taught her. That book it is called “Income and Wealth from Self-Directed Investing”. It is available at amazon.com. I email that stock scoring software free of charge to book buyers who request it. I went on to write five more investment books.
My objective is to encourage all couples to learn how to successfully and safely manage their life savings - together.
If books are not your thing, then I suggest you listen to the 223 free “Safe Dividend Investing” podcasts. The important thing is to gain investment knowledge to protect and safely grow your life savings.
STOCK SELECTORS USED THIS WEEK
The U.S STOCK DATA SELCTORS USED WERE
(1) common shares
(2) a dividend yield exceeding 5%
(3) the number of shares traded over 1 million
(4) an operating margin exceeding 5%
(5) a share price exceeding $9.10
(6) a weekly share price gain exceeding 1%.
The 5 US STOCKS THAT QUALIFIED & THEIR SCORES:
5 Matches
(1) Altria Group Inc (MO) Score 63
(2) Pfizer Inc (PFE) Score 60
(3) TELUS Corp* (TU) Score 52
(4) Enbridge Inc* (ENB) Score 68
(5) Rogers Communications Inc* (RCI) Score 61
*It is interesting that TELUS, Enbridge and Rogers are Canadian headquartered companies traded on both the NYSE and the TSX.
CANADIAN STOCK DATA SELCTORS USED:
(1) common shares
2) a dividend yield exceeding 3%
(3) the number of shares traded over 488 thousand
(4) an operating margin exceeding 10%
(5) a share prices exceeding $37.35
(6) weekly share price gain exceeding1%.
The 5 CANADIAN STOCKS THAT QUALIFIED & THEIR SCORES:
(1) Endeavour Mining ( EDV) Score 54
(2) Emera Inc (EMA)Score 66
(3) Canadian Utilities Ltd ( CU) Score 54
(4) Tourmaline Oil Corp ( TOU) Score 67
(5) Nutrien Ltd (NTR) Score 58
THE DATA USED IN CALCULATING THE STOCK SCORES FOR THE US AND CANADIAN STOCKS: (1) Price $ .
(2) Price 4yrs ago $
(3) Book Value $
(4) Advisor Buys #
(5) Advisor Strong Buys #
(6) Dividend. Yield %
(7) Operating Margin %
(8) Share Volume Traded #
(9) Price/Earnings Ratio.
*** GO TO THIS PODCAST’S LANDING PAGE FOR THE CHARTS SHOWING THE SCORE CALCULATIONS FOR EACH STOCK ***
HIGHS AND LOWS
While identifying and scoring today’s US and Canadian stocks identified on the landing page, I found the following interesting:
The most expensive stock was <Nutrien >at <$81.88>and <Pfizer > was the least expensive at <$23.32>.
The most buy recommendations by analysts were for <Nutrien> with<8> and <Canadian Utilities> had <0> recommendations.
There were< 3> strong buy recommendations for < Rogers Communications> and < 7>with <0 > recommendations.
The highest Book Value was for<Nutrien > at <$62.28 > and the lowest was for < Altria Group> with <minus $1.32>
The highest number of shares traded was < 35 Million> by < Pfizer> and the lowest number was < 350,000 > for < Endeavour Mining >.
The highest operating margin was for <Altria Group > at<43.69%> and the lowest was for < Nutrien> with a <6.48%>.
The best price-to-earnings ratio of <10.0x > was for< Altria Group> and the worse was <minus 73.7x > for < Endeavour Mining>.
The stock with the highest IDM score of < 68 > was for < Enbridge>. The Lowest score was a <52> for <Telus >.
It was also interesting that I had to go down to a dividend selector of 3% to find the 5 Canadian companies who qualified this week. Perhaps that is an indication of the current stresses in the stock market
Note #1.In the first 190 Podcasts of Safe Dividend Investing, you can find answers to hundreds of investment questions.
Note #2: In Podcast 210 you can see detailed information on how scores are calculated and why these scoring elements were chosen. To have faith in a score I learned long ago that it was important to understand how it is calculated
Until next week’s podcast this is Ian Duncan MacDonald encouraging you to become a successful, wise, self-directed investor.
Any questions and comments can be sent to imacd@informus.ca.