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 267 - PROTECT YOUR PORTFOLIO NOW FROM INFLATION AND A RECESSION
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Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 267 on March 21st of 2026.
My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am the 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". For more information on all my books, stock scoring software and podcasts go to www.informus.ca
Geopolitical risk has now become the biggest threat to the stock market. It has created supply chain instability and has polarized countries into being either friends or enemies. Close behind this risk and being used as weapons to subjugate perceived enemy countries are tariffs, sanctions, export controls and restricted access to new technologies.
Supply chains have been thrown into disarray and long-established global alliances are being shredded. The flames of retaliatory trade wars between nations are being fanned.
In this week's podcast I discuss how to build a stock portfolio that will allow you to safely navigate these turbulent times and protect you from both the threat of inflation and a recession.
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
imacd@informus.ca
Podcast 267
Safe Dividend Investing
21 March 2026
INVESTOR CONCERNS FOR 2026
Greetings to investors all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast #267, recorded on March 21st of 2026. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald. I am the author of seven investment books. My latest book “Achieving Financial Independence Safely – 200 NYSE Exchange Stocks Analyzed and Scored” was available for delivery from Amazon on January 3rd.
To learn about the benefits of my investment books, please visit my website www.informus.ca.. Alternatively, you can also do a Google search or an Amazon search for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books”. Reviews by readers and sample chapters are available at Amazon.
Investing is both serious and dangerous. It is not a game. In choosing stocks for your portfolio, you do not want the playing field and the players in that field changing so rapidly that you become fearful in calculating the risk on the future value of your shares and the income you expect to realize from them.
Stability and predictability are your best friends in managing a stock portfolio. It seems these days that predictability and stability have fled.
In January, inflation, fear of a recession and stresses on credit costs were hot topics and seen as stresses. In March the following risks have become every investors greatest financial concern with no easy or quick solutions in sight.
Geopolitical risk now becomes the biggest threat to the stock market. It has created supply chain instability and has polarized countries into being either friends or enemies. Close behind this risk and being used as weapons to subjugate perceived enemy countries are tariffs, sanctions, export controls and restricted access to new technologies. Supply chains have been thrown into disarray and long-established global alliances are being shredded. The flames of retaliatory trade wars between nations are being fanned.
Constant armed conflicts and escalating confrontations are not only creating petroleum energy roadblocks but forcing a massive immigration crisis. An end is still not in sight for the four-year war between the Russia and the Ukraine. The Ukrainians appear to be a proxy for the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The recent Israel/American coalition at war with Iran has further destabilizes the world’s economic stability by choking off 20% of the world’s access to petroleum. In addition, we now have threats by the US for an attack on Cuba. The US believe they could easily duplicate their recent overthrowing of the Venezuelan government and also replaced it with a puppet government.
Added to this instability are further concerns that China might invade Taiwan and drag the US into another conflict. As well, increasing friction between China and Japan is further threatening the world economy. A US led technology containment with China also adds friction and risk.
The US government is seen as the principal source of global geopolitical risk in 2026. Its unpredictable shifting alliances and sanctions are causing a global governance vacuum. It contributes to global tensions, heightened conflict risk, trade policy uncertainty and election instability in all major economies.
Furthermore, the internal political battles trying to reshape US domestic institutions is adding to the economic stresses. These US initiated risks are disrupting food, petroleum and water supplies, triggering migration and destabilizing governments. Added to this changing weather patterns are also creating significant risks.
The result of all this turmoil is that investors are reducing their investment return expectations, increasing their focus on diversifying their portfolios and switching from speculative investing to quality asset investing. Many fear a return to the ultra high inflation and interest rate levels we have not seen since the nineteen seventies.
If inflation levels did increase to 10% or more, you could expect to see interest rates reaching 18% or higher. This rise could cause a prolonged market crash and recession. It would push unemployment rates to levels we have not seen in decades.
Normally to reduce unemployment and to encourage higher employment the government strategy is to reduce borrowing rates. This encourages business to invest in growing their businesses. However lower interest rates increase inflation rates. Normally to decrease inflation rates the government increases borrowing rates which in turn increases production costs and leads to further unemployment as business owners cut expenses. One of their highest expenses is their employee numbers. Higher unemployment would lead to weak consumer spending, higher bankruptcy rates, mortgage defaults, a reduction in home construct and less speculative investing. Why speculate when you can receive high interest payments for your money with no risk.
I remember fifty some years ago when the monthly interest paid on a simple savings account was 7%. Now to do better than a fraction of a percent you must tie up your savings account money for months.
How could you survive these possible turbulent times of high inflation that we could again be facing? I have found that investing in financially strong companies with decades of paying out ever higher dividends protected me from the gyrations of share prices in an unstable economy. This approach makes the share price of your stocks almost irrelevant.
In market crashes and recessions in the last twenty-five years, I have seen share values of even the financially strongest companies dropping by 30% or more. Rather than panic and sell these strong stocks you are encouraged to relax.
Why would you relax? Because you should accept that such declines are temporary and the share price of these stocks with their steady dividend payments, high operating margins, high book values and low price-to-earning rations will again reach new record highs within a year or two.
To help calm you the IDM scoring system that I supply to my book buyers scores stocks out of a possible 100 points. The nine information elements that are easily gathered to calculate a stock’s score are:
1) The current share price of the stock
2) The share price of the stock four years ago
3) The current book value of the stock
4) The number of analysts giving the stock a buy recommendation
5) The number of analysts giving the stock a strong buy recommendation
6) The dividend yield percent of the stock
7) The operating margin percentage of the stock
8) The volume of the stock’s shares being traded
9) The price-to-earnings ratio for the stock
I would only sell a stock if its score fell below 50 while at the same time its dividend yield percent fell below 5%. This never seems to happen. The scoring system allows an investor to accept that the strong increase in the value of their portfolio and ever-increasing dividend income should be measured over years - not over weeks or months. The IDM scoring system will reveal that few stocks score over 60. Most stocks score under 50.
I verified the value of scoring stocks several years ago. I wanted to see what would happen if I tracked the top 20 stocks by score being traded on the New York Stock Exchange to see how long they would maintain their strength. I have now followed these 20 stocks for many years and watched that portfolio grow spectacularly. It has significantly beat such markers as the returns of the S&P 500. Using one of my earlier books you can easily verify these results.
The historical perspective of each stock you consider purchasing also needs to be taken into consideration. It takes only a few seconds on the internet to scan dividend payout charts for a stock. Those charts show data going back for decades. You can see how during the market crash years of 2000, 2008 and 2020 that while the share price of some of these stocks may have declined significantly - within a year or two most of these stock’s share prices again reached a new record highs.
You will also see that usually the dividend payouts for these strong stocks did not decline during these market crashes. Some stocks even increased their dividend payouts.
The reason you would want to invest equally in 20 strong dividend stocks in your portfolio is to achieve the safety of diversity. If one of the stocks declined and the other 19 increased the impact of the declining stock would be almost irrelevant. It is the value of all the stocks in the total portfolio that is critical to building wealth not the gyrations of an individual stock.
Most speculative stock investors fail to realize a profit in the stock market because they are chasing the illusion of realizing immediate immense wealth. They convince themselves that every stock they buy is going to be the next Apple, the next Microsoft or the next Tesla. The find it difficult to accept that you can build a million-dollar portfolio in ten or twenty years if you invest in 20 carefully selected, financially strong, high dividend companies. This creates a portfolio that will give you a generous, rising dividend income for the rest of your life while the value of your portfolio keeps on growing and keeping your dividend income ahead of inflation.
You might ask what kinds of companies are most likely to give you a steady rising dividend income stream. You start your search by using a selector to first isolate all stocks with dividend yields of 5% or more. From this initial group you use other selectors like share price, trading volumes and operating margins to bring your choices down to a manageable number of perhaps 50. Next using the IDM scoring system plus checking each stock’s historical share price and dividend payout allows you to reduce that initial 50 down to the more manageable 20 for your portfolio. It takes hours not weeks to go through this selection process.
No stock is totally risk free but having safely diversified your investment money over 20 stocks can assure you that your total portfolio will increase and supply you with a reliable income for the rest of your life.
That’s all for this week.