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 257 - THE TEMPORARY NATURE OF HIGH SHARE PRICES
Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 257, on January 10th of 2026. Happy New Year!
My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". Until February 10th, it is available at a discounted price.
This week I answer a question from one of our listeners who wants to understand why some of the largest of the financially strong companies who appeared in my previous books do not appear in the current book. I relate what I learned in building a national commercial risk data base of 2,200,000 businesses and why I am not surprised that the high share prices of companies is often temporary. The stocks who quickly climb from a share price of a few dollars to hundreds of dollars are at the fickle mercy of speculators. I illustrate why I trust my future income and wealth to dividend payouts rather than share prices.
My books are not get-rich-quick books. They are about taking a little time to carefully seek out financially strong companies with long histories of paying ever rising high dividends accompanied by rising share prices. Diversification, persistence and patience win out in investing. The objective is achieving financial independence for the rest of your life.
Please, visit my website www.informus.ca if you wish to learn more about me and my writing.
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
PODCAST 257
SAFE DIVIDEND INVESTING
Greetings to investors all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 257, on January 10th of 2026. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of seven investment books. My latest book “Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE exchange Stocks Analyzed and Scored” became available for delivery from Amazon on January 3, 2026. If interested, you can find it listed along with my other books by doing a search in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books”.
One of this podcast’s regular listeners wrote and asked me to explain my comment in last week’s podcast as to why so few of the financially strong high dividend shares listed in this new book never appeared in my previous investment books. She wanted to know how this was possible. Her query made me curious.
How many of the stocks in the new book have previously appeared in my other books about stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange? I went into the new book and counted them. Out of the new book’s recommended 176 stocks, there were 72 that had previously been listed in one of previous books. I also checked the 21 stocks that were not recommended, 5 of them had previously appeared. Of the 6 hot, popular Artificial Intelligence stocks in the book who were also not recommended, none of these share price leaders had ever appeared in my previous books. This is understandable since my books only include stocks paying a dividend yield of at least 3.5%. None of these AI stocks appear to have ever paid a dividend exceeding one percent.
In constructing a national commercial risk database of 2,200,000 businesses many years ago I quickly learned few new businesses survive five years. I saw that each year about 20% of the companies disappeared from the database to be replaced by almost the same number of new companies.
What was the source of our data? Every 90 days 4,000 manufacturers, wholesalers and service companies would supply us with how much their customers then owed them. We would match their customers with our existing company database and create new files if the company had never previously appeared. If we could not match a company, we would open a new file for that company. If after a year the quarterly submissions showed that a company in our database was no longer buying from suppliers they were removed from the data base.
We live in a capitalist society in which businesses compete for customers. If you cannot attract enough buyers to cover your expenses, then you cannot generate the profit from your sales to keep your business operating. Without a profit a business fails and ceases to operate.
Failing companies do not necessarily go bankrupt. Often they are classified as limited out-of-business companies now without assets. The owners close the business and move on to often form new limited companies. Their competitors acquire the closed business’ customers and with increased sales become more profitable. These competitors can now pay high enough dividend yields from their profits to qualify for inclusion in my latest book.
Every day companies are dying, and new companies are being born. Thus, it is not surprising so many companies are making their first appearance in my new book.
Some companies’ exhibit extreme share price growth. This is often because their products are seen by speculators as being so much in demand that their sales will grow at an outstanding rate. This encourages the speculative investors to believe that owning their shares will make them rich. The demand for these shares quickly exceeds the supply of shares available to buy. This pushes the speculators to place higher and higher bids to acquire these shares with so much wealth potential. Very rapidly the share prices can exceed $100 a share.
Value investors who are intent upon building a portfolio of financially strong companies that will provide you with a safe dividend income for decades to come, ignore the high flying get rich quick stocks speculators are bidding on? They know stocks that show unusually high quick gains in share price can also show unusually quick declines. These high-priced stocks are so popular with speculators that the stock's management does not see any need to attract investors by offering attractive dividends.
When I look at the high share prices of the 6 AI stocks appearing in my latest book on New York Stock Exchange . I compare them to high share priced stock that appeared 5 years ago in 2021 when my last book “American High Dividend Handbook” was released. It was written in 2021 just after the Covid market crash.
I wonder who were the US hot stocks then which speculators feared missing out in acquiring. Can what happened to those outstanding stocks give us insight into what will happen to these current 6 AI stocks that speculators are so eager to acquire?
An analyst Identified the following 10 stocks as the best performing stocks in 2021:
(1) Devon Energy, stock symbol DVN.
(2) Marathon Oil, stock symbol MRO
(3) Fortinet, stock symbol FTNT’
(4) Moderna, stock symbol MRNA
(5) Signature Bank, stock symbol SBNY
(6) Ford , stock symbol F
(7) Bath and Body Works Inc., stock symbol, BBWI
(8) Diamondback Energy, stock symbol, FANG
(9) Nvidia, stock symbol NVDA]
(10)Nucor, stock symbol , NUE
The Highest price in 2026 of these ten 2021 stock is Diamond Energy at $147.26. However, this highest price can be argued since Nvidia, which is now trading at $42, a share had a four for one split of its stock in July of 2024.
Marathon Oil is no longer listed.
Nvidia, Fortinet, Moderna pay dividends so low that the dividends are recorded as zero dividends paid.
Currently, the lowest price of the 10 stocks is Signature Bank. Its share price is now listed at $1.10. On January 5th of 2021 it was trading at $135.43. It hit its highest price in February of 2022 when it was trading at $316.44. In April of 2021 Signature Bank 0101170501had paid a dividend of 56 cents. Their last dividend paid was 10 cents in June of 2023.
Questions arise as to what happened to Marathon Oil and Signature Bank?
My research indicates that the rapidly growing Signature Bank, was a commercial bank with 40 private client offices across the USA. It was shut down by regulators in 2023 after its customers lost confidence in the bank and withdrew their money. The run on the bank was triggered by the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank. In one day, there had been a 42-billion-dollar outflow of investors deposits. Signature Bank’s exposure to downturns, involvement in cryptocurrency, poor management and uninsured deposits is reported to have caused its failure.
How many eager speculators who saw Signature Bank’s share price rise from $135.43 in 2021 to $316.44 in 2022 bought Signature Bank’s shares then because they convinced themselves that it was sure to double again in the next year and make them rich?
The disappearance of Marathon Oil from the stock market was less dramatic. It was acquired by ConocoPhillips in 2024 for $22.5 billion dollars and Marathon’s debts. The shareholders received 0.255 shares of ConocoPhillips for each Marathon share. It has been viewed as a good strategic fit with many efficiencies realized.
Of the remaining stocks:
Devon Energy is now trading at $36.15, a share which is about double the $18.57 it was trading at in 2021. However, in 2022 it had reached $77.05. In 2025 it paid a dividend payout of 24 cents which is considerably lower than the $1.27 dividend payout in 2022. In 2021 its dividend payout had been 11 cents.
Fortinet was trading at $28.34 in January of 2021. It is now at $76.56 but reached $109.55 in June of 2022. It has never paid a dividend.
Moderna, which is now trading at $35.11 was trading at $109.18 in January of 2021. It reached a high of $397.87 in August of 2021. It has never paid a dividend.
Ford is now trading at $14.13, was trading at $8.65 in January of 2021. It reached its highest share price of $19.55 in January of 2022.
Bath and Body Works is now at $22.95 and was trading at $3.67 in January of 2021. It reached its high of $76.40 in December of 2021.
DiamondBack Energy is now at $147.26. In January of 2021 it had been at $52.74. Its high point of $203.72 was reached in September of 2022. Of all the 10 stocks in 2025 it is now paying the highest dividend of one dollar.
Nvidia is now $185.62. The time a speculator would have wanted to buy this stock would have been in 2012 when it was 30 cents. By January of 2021 it was at 13.48. Its highest share price of $196.62 was reached in November of 2025. It pays a blistering dividend of one cent.
Nucor is currently at $165.51. In January of 2021 it was at $52.51. It reached $191.63 in April of 2024. It pays a dividend of 55 cents or a dividend yield of 1.37%.
These outstanding stocks of 2021 illustrate that share prices that rise quickly can also fall quickly. It is very much a question of the timing as to when you bought the stock and when you sell a stock. There are road signs telling you to sell because this is as high as a stock is going to climb. It is too easy to convince yourself that this is just a temporary decline in the share price and that it will rise again. No one can accurately predict future share prices.
Those who excitedly invested every penny they had or could borrow in Signature Bank at $316.44 lost every cent invested. Their dreams of becoming incredibly rich by investing in this stock were just dreams. They had refused to accept that even businesses whose share prices are in hundreds of dollars can fail.
Safe investing sees the movement of share prices as a minor consideration in purchasing stocks. What is more important is spreading your investment money equally over 20 stocks who display: higher operating margins, lower price-to-earnings ratios, at least a 10-year history of ever rising dividend payouts with rising share prices, a book value close to or higher than the current share price, and a dividend yield of at least 5% paid out of profits.
If one or two stocks do not perform well the other 18 strong stocks in your portfolio will more than cover any shrinkage. Also, when your portfolio goes through the inevitable market crashes that occur every 5 to 10 years, the temporary decline in all your share prices is seen as a minor concern because your dividend payouts remain steady. By contrast, speculators are forced to sell their shares below their purchase price to realize enough cash to cover their daily living expenses.
Profits from which dividends are paid are the result of decisions made by the managers of a company. These managers can only influence the mob of speculators that determine share prices. Long term wealth is realized from profits not speculation on prices.
That’s all for this week.