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 227 - ALWAYS CHECK 25 YEARS OF HISTORICAL PRICES AND DIVIDEND PAYOUTS TO AVOID NEGATIVE SURPRISES BEFOR BUYING
Welcome to Podcast 227 on 21st of June, 2025:
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 +10% (5) share prices + $13.26 (6) weekly share price gain +1%.
QUALIFIERS’ STOCK SYMBOLS & THEIR SCORES: (1) ZIM Score 51 (2) FRO Score 61 (3) CIVI Score 79 (4) CNQ Score 65 (5) MUR Score 69.
5 CANADIAN STOCK SELCTORS (1) common shares (2) dividend yield + 5% (3) # shares traded over 419K (4) operating margins +10% (5) share prices $13.26 (6) weekly share price gain +1%.
QUALIFIERS’ & SCORES (1) PXT Score 68 (2) CNQ Score 59 (3) NPI Score 58 (4) PEY Score 61 (5) RCI.B Score 64.
DATA USED FOR ALL STOCK SCORE CALCULATIONS: (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.
CNADIAN SCORE CALCULATIONS (K=thousand M=million)
STOCK 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PXT |15.27| 15.82 |25.57 |0|0| 10.09| 26.26| 1M| 13.7x
CNQ|46.00| 22.67| 18.77| 7 |0| 5.11| 29.37| 30M |12.9x
NPI |21.76| 41.41| 16.10| 5| 0 |5.51| 32.55 | 1.5M| | 21.8x
PEY |20.51| 7.33| 13.63| 3| 0 | 6.44 |23.07 |2.4M |13.8x
RCI.B |38.15| 64.68 19.40| 4 | 1 | 5.24| 22.40| 2.7M| 11.6x
US SCORE CALCULATIONS
| ZIM | 16.53 | 48.94|33.52 | 0 | 0 | 46.28 |31.24| 10.5M|0.8x
| FRO| 18.98 | 8.84 | 10.51| 2 | 0 | 7.06 | 32.82 | 3M | 12.1x
| CIVI| 32.41 | 49.05 |70.57 | 2 | 2 | 9.32 |26.79| 5M | 3.7x
| CNQ| 33.38 |18.42 |13.67 | 7 | 0 | 5.18 | 29.37 | 12M |12.9x
| MUR| 24.83 |25.29 |35.61 | 1 | 0 | 5.24 | 20.53 | 4M | 9.5x
For information on my 6 investment books go to www.informus.ca.
Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and 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
21 June 2025
Podcast 227
Greetings to listeners all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 227, on June 21 of 2025. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald.
The objective of this weekly podcast is to show those who are timid about self-directed investing that they can safely build a financially strong portfolio of stocks that will give them a generous high dividends for the rest of their lives and grow its value by several multiples. The following describes how to do it.
There are about 16,000 stocks US and Canadian stocks. Fortunately, free software supplied by many financial institutions allows you to use screeners to narrow your search for strong stocks down to a few. I personally use TD Bank’s free research tools that they supply to self-directed investors, however on occasion I do use a similar free research service available at the Yahoo Finance website.
By entering the following 6 criteria into the selector software I can reduce the thousands of US stocks down to an initial 5 contenders for my portfolio.
THE U.S STOCK DATA SELCTORS I USED THIS WEEK WERE
(1) US common shares
(2) a dividend yield exceeding 5%
(3) the number of shares traded of 1 million or more
(4) an operating margin exceeding 10%
(5) a share price exceeding $13.26
(6) a weekly share price gain exceeding 1%.
By gradually changing the criteria in these selectors I can gradually and sequentially increase the number of stocks to be considered for the portfolio without flooding myself with work.
THIS WEEK’S 5 US STOCKS THAT QUALIFIED, THEIR CALCULATED SCORES & STOCK SYMBOLS
(1) Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd (Score 51) ZIM
(2) Frontline PLC ( Score 61 ) FRO
(3) Civitas Resources Inc (Score79 ) CIVI
(4) ) Canadian Natural Resources (Score 65 ) CNQ
(5) Murphy Oil Corporation (Score 69 ) MUR
The next step in acquiring suitable stocks is to go to the page in the TD research database that provides detailed investment information for each stock. This is a free service that they provide to self-directed investors . The following data their is then entered in to my IDM stock scoring software. This software is supplied free to those who have bought any of my investment books and have requested it.
THE DATA USED IN CALCULATING THE IDM STOCK SCORES:
(1) The Stock’s Current Share Price $ .
(2) Its Share Price 4 years ago $
(3) Its Book Value $
(4) Today’s Advisor Buy Recommendations#
(5 )Today’s Advisor Strong Buy Recommendations #
(6) Its Dividend. Yield %
(7) Its Operating Margin %
(8) The Average Daily Share Volume Traded over the last 90 days #
(9) Today’s Price-to-Earnings Ratio.
***The scoring identifies whether the 5 qualified stocks that the selectors brought to your attention are worth adding to your portfolio.
The IDM scoring software rates stocks between 0 and 100. The highest score I have ever calculated was an 86. The lowest was a 3. I personally avoid adding stocks to my portfolio that score under 50. (Most stocks score under 50). The higher the score the stronger the stock appears to be, however there can be situations where the highest score may not be your best choice for your portfolio . For example, one of the stocks scored today was Civitas Resources with a high score of 79. However, when I did my usual further due diligence research of checking historic share prices and dividend payouts back, year-by year, to 1999, I found in 2011, the shares were trading at $1,517.59. On August 20 of 2014 they were trading at $6,852.61. On March 15th of 2017 they had declined to $114.93 and then to $29.92 on Dec11 of 2017. I also learned that they did not start paying dividends until June 14 of 2021. The dividend then was 35 cents and the stock price was $50.44. From May of 2017 to May of 2020 the share price had been around $18 a share. December 14 of 2021 the dividend was 46 cents. They then started paying dividends every few months of 50 cents. The last dividend payment was March of 2025.
My next due diligence research was to do a Google search using the words "legals and complaints” along with "Civitas Resources Inc”. My perception of Civitas changed from a positive to one of concern and caution because this Google search disclosed that Civita was involved in a securities fraud class action that a law firm was solicitating disgruntled investors to join in before the end of July, 2025. There were allegations that Civitas misled investors about its oil production capabilities and financial performance. They had a change in their top management within the last few years when a Woulter Van Kemper became Chairman of Civitas. I would wonder what his involvement in the legal action is.
Having a background in the mining industry, I am always cynical about natural resource companies. They go through boom-and-bust cycles caused by constantly fluctuating world prices. They do not have a protective moat of established loyal customers. Transactions seem to be all about the price of the commodity at any given time rather than any unique built-in value. This can result in wild swings in share price. Despite its high score, at the present time, it does not have the historically consistent rising share price and dividend payouts that I personally seek for my portfolio. Perhaps it would be a good acquisition but there are hundreds of stocks that have consistently rising share prices and dividend payouts who may have scores only in the fifties that might be a safer stock purchase.
Safety is also why I recommend a portfolio of 20 stocks to equally invest in. It takes time to acquire stocks and to monitor them once purchased. Twenty stocks are manageable. Too many stocks create too much work and discourages investors. As well, if one or two carefully chosen stocks out of 20 should encounter a share price and dividend shrinkage the impact upon the total portfolio of a few stocks would be negligible when the total portfolio is generating 6% t0 8% in dividend income and showing significant annual capital gains from all the other stocks.
Shifting our focus to the Canadian market, a slightly different set of filters was applied, reflecting unique characteristics and trading dynamics north of the border and its smaller trading volumes.
CANADIAN STOCK DATA SELCTORS USED:
(1) Canadian common shares
(2) a dividend yield exceeding 5%
(3) the number of shares traded of 419,000 or more
(4) an operating margin exceeding 10%
(5) a share price exceeding $13.26
(6) weekly share price gain exceeding 1%.
The 5 CANADIAN STOCKS THAT QUALIFIED & THEIR SCORES:
(1) Parex Resources Inc ( Score 64 ) PXT
(2) Canadian Natural Resources ( Score63 ) cnq
(3) Northland Power Inc (Score 58 ) NPI
(4) Peyto Exploration & Dev. (Score 61 ) PEY
(5) Rogers Communications Inc (Score 64 ) RCI.B
*** GO TO THIS PODCAST’S LANDING PAGE FOR CHARTS SHOWING THE DETAILED 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 < CANADIAN NATURAL RESOURCES>at < $46.00>and <PAREX RESOURCES > was the least expensive at <$15.27>.
The most buy recommendations by analysts were <7> for <CANADIAN NATURAL RESOURCES > and the least was <0>for both <PAREX RESOURCES> AND <ZIM INTEGRATED>.
<CIVITAS RESOURCES> has <2>strong buy recommendations.
The highest Book Value was for< MURPHY OIL> at <$35.61> and the lowest was for <FRONTLINE > at <$10.51>.
The highest number of shares traded of < 30,000,000> was for <CANADIAN NATURAL RESOURCES >and the lowest number was for <PAREX REXOURCES> with <1,000,000 >.
The highest operating margin was for < Frontline PLC> at<32.82% >and the lowest was for <MURPHY OIL > at <20.53%>
The lowest Price-to-Earnings ratio of <0.8x> was for <ZIM INTEGRATED >and the highest was< 21.8x> for <NORTHLAND POWER>
The stock with the highest IDM score of <79 > was <CIVITAS RESOURCES >. The Lowest score of <58 > was for <NORTHLAND POWER >
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.