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 229 - THE 10 BEST USA AND CANADA HIGH DIVIDEND SHARE PRICE GAINERS
Welcome to Podcast 229 on 5th of July, 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) price gain +5%. (5) share price exceeding $22.72
QUALIFIERS’ STOCK SYMBOLS & THEIR SCORES: (1) NE Score 70 (2) CIVI Score 76 (3) LYB Score 59 (4) MUR Score 56 (5) WHR Score 48.
5 CANADIAN STOCK SELCTORS (1) common shares (2) dividend yield + 4% (3) # shares traded over 455K (4) operating margins +5% (5) share prices $22.72 (6) weekly share price gain +5%.
QUALIFIERS’ & SCORES (1) PXT Score 49 (2) RCI.B Score 61 (3) NPI Score 57 (4) BCE Score 40 (5) CVE Score 52.
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 | 14.38 | 22.86| 25.33 | 0| 0|10.71| 26.23 | 171K | 13.0x
RCI.B | 44.04| 66.69| 19.40| 7 |0| 4.54| 22.40| 844K |13.4x
NPI | 22.49| 34.37| 16.10| 5| 0 | 5.34 |32.55 | 344K| | 22.6x
BCE | 30.84| 6 1.99| 18.71| 2| 0 | 5.67 |12.90 |1.2M |73.0x
CVE | 19.16| 11.37 | 16.30 | 9 | 1 | 4.18 | 8.32| 3.7M | 12.9x
US SCORE CALCULATIONNES
|NE | 28.40 | 24.44 | 29.26 | 4 | 0 | 7.04 | 22.75| 1M| 9.5x
| CIVI | 29.72 | 46.66 | 70.57| 2 | 3 | 10.16 | 26.79 | 1M | 3.4x
| LYB | 62.01 | 102.73 | 38.48 | 2 | 0 | 8.84 |3.97| 2M | 22.6x
| MUR | 24.47 | 23.54 |35.67 | 1 | 0 | 5.31 | 20.53 | 844K | 9.3x
| WHR| 109.93 | 225.02 | 48.78 | 2 | 0 | 6.37 | 2.81 | 730K | 718.3x
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
5 July 2025
Podcast 229
Greetings to listeners all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 229, on July 5 of 2025. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald.
The objective of these weekly podcasts are to show those who are nervous about self-directed investing that they too can safely build a financially strong portfolio of stocks that will give them a generous high dividend income for the rest of their lives and grow in value by several multiples.
There are7,579 US and Canadian stocks. Fortunately, free software supplied by many financial institutions allows you 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 to do my selections, however on occasion I do use a similar free research service available at the Yahoo Finance website. There are many financial institutions supplying similar stock selection tools.
By entering the following 6 criteria into the selector software I can reduce the thousands of possible US stocks down to the most outstanding 5 that I wish to consider for my portfolio this week.
STARTING WITH THE U.S STOCKS, THESE ARE DATA SELECTORS I USED TO REVEAL THIS WEEK’S 5 OUTSTANDING US STOCKS
(1) US common shares
(2) a dividend yield exceeding 5%
(3) the number of shares traded of 1,000,000 or more
(4) an operating margin exceeding 5%
(5) a share price exceeding $22.72
(6) a weekly share price gain exceeding 5%.
By changing the criteria in these 5 selectors I can gradually and sequentially increase the number of stocks to be considered for my portfolio of 20 stocks without flooding myself with work.
THIS WEEK’S 5 US STOCKS THAT QUALIFIED WITH THEIR CALCULATED SCORES & STOCK SYMBOLS
(1) NOBLE CORP PLC ( Score 70 ) NE
(2) CIVITAS RESOURCES INC ( Score 76) CIVI
(3) LYONDELLBASELL INDUSTRIES NV (Score 59 ) LYB
(4) MURPHY OIL CORPORATION (Score 69) MUR
(5) WHIRLPOOL CORPORATION (Score 48 ) WHR
The next step in acquiring suitable stocks is to go to a page in in a stock research database that provides detailed investment information for each stock. This is usually a free service that they provide to self-directed investors. The following data is then entered into my IDM stock scoring software which is supplied free to those who have bought any of my investment books and requested it.
THE DATA SELECTED IN CALCULATING THE IDM STOCK SCORES INCLUDES:
(1) The Stock’s Current Share Price $ .
(2) Its Share Price 4 years ago $
(3) Its Book Value $
(4) The number of Advisor Buy Recommendations#
(5 ) The number of 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.
A score helps you determine if a stock is strong enough to be considered for 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 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, it is recommended that you always check historic share prices and dividend payouts back, year by year, to 1999. You are looking for a trend over those years in which both the share price and the dividend payout are increasing. It would be unusual to see consecutive increases each year but over those 25 years there would be an upward trend.
It is also recommended that you always do a Google search using the words "legals and complaints” along with the stock’s company name. Your perception of a stock changes, from a positive one to one of concern if your Google search disclosed that stock was involved in a securities fraud class action or some other potentially serious p problem.
Ideally you want to invest in stocks that are surrounded by a protective moat of established loyal customers. You may wish to shy away from industries where the price of what they sell is their only advantage. While no one can accurately predict future share prices there are many stocks that have consistently rising share prices and high-dividend payouts who score in the fifties that can be a safer stock to purchase than those scoring in the sixties and seventies.
Safety is also increased when you invest equally in a portfolio of 20 stocks. It takes time to acquire stocks and to monitor them once purchased. Twenty stocks are manageable. Too many stocks can create too much work and discourage investors. Also, if one or two of your carefully chosen 20 stocks should temporarily encounter share price and dividend shrinkage the impact upon the total portfolio of 20 stocks will be negligible when your total portfolio is generating 6% t0 8% in dividend income and generating an annual capital gain of 9% or more.
Shifting to the Canadian market, a slightly different set of filters was applied, this reflects its stocks smaller trading volumes and listings. In Canada there are 4,871 stocks to invest in versus the US where 7,579 stocks were available.
CANADIAN STOCK DATA SELCTORS USED:
(1) Canadian common shares
(2) a dividend yield exceeding 4%
(3) the number of shares traded of 455,000 or more
(4) an operating margin exceeding 5%
(5) a share price exceeding $11.06
(6) weekly share price gain exceeding 2%.
The 5 CANADIAN STOCKS THAT QUALIFIED & THEIR SCORES:
(1)PAREX RESOURCES ( Score 49) PXT
(2) ROGERS COMMUNICATIONS INC ( Score 61)RCI.B
(3) NORTHLAN POWER INC (Score 57) NPI
(4) BCE INC (Score 40) BCE
(5) CENOVAS ENERGY INC (Score 52) CVE
*** GO TO THIS PODCAST’S LANDING PAGE FOR A CHART SHOWING ALL THE INFORMATION THAT RESULTED IN THE SCORES FOR EACH STOCK ***
HIGHS AND LOWS
While identifying and scoring today’s US and Canadian stocks identified, I found the following interesting:
The most expensive stock was <WHIRLPOOL CORP >at < $109.93>and < PAREX RESOURCES INC> was the least expensive at <$14.38>
The stock with the highest dividend yield percent was <PAREX RESOURCES > with a 10.71% yield. The lowest was <CENOVUS ENERGY> with a <4.18%> yield
The most buy recommendations by analysts were <9> for<CENOVUS ENERGY> and the least number was <0> for <PAREX RESOURCES >.
The strongest buy recommendations were <3> for <CIVITAS RESOURCES>.
The highest Book Value was for< CIVITAS RESOURCES> at <$70.57> and the lowest was for < NORTHLAND POWER > at <$16.10>.
The highest number of shares traded at <3,700,000 > was for < CENOVUS ENERGY >and the lowest number was < 171,000 > for < PAREX RESOURCES >.
The highest operating margin was for <NORTHLAND POWER> at<32.55%>and the lowest was for <LYONDELLBASELL INDUSTRIES > at <3.97%>
The lowest Price-to-Earnings ratio of <3.4x> was for <CIVITAS RESOURCES>and the highest was< 718.3x > for < WHIRLPOOL CORP >
The stock with the highest IDM score was <CIVITAS RESOURCES > with a <76 >. The Lowest score of < 40 > was for <BCE INC >
The perfect stock does not exist. You choose the “best” 20 stocks you can find always with the intention that you will hold them for decades. Choice is always a job of using your best judgment in comparing stocks for your portfolio. It is not unusual to initially see the price of the strong stock you have carefully chosen decline. Be patient.
It was interesting to see that Noble Corp Plc was not listed on the stock exchange until July 5, 2021. BCE did not have a high IDM score but the number of analysts recommending it as a buy have now increased to 2. Although BCE’s share price is now 50% of what it was 4 years ago you can never lose sight of the fact that its executives want to regain the lofty investment appeal this multi-billion dollar corporation enjoyed for decades.
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.