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 273 - SO, YOU WANNA GET RICH QUICK?
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 273 on May 2nd 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
In this week's podcast we hear from Eddie in Vancouver who writes about how he came to be a self directed investor and why he ceased to be a stock speculator chasing after the next big score.
It is important to do your own research when you are looking for financially strong stocks with long histories of rising share prices and dividend payouts. The stock scoring software that comes with my books helps you in making good stock buying decisions. Over the 273 issues of the weekly "Safe Dividend Investing" podcasts you can get many insights into building a safe strong generous portfolio.
What investment insights do you have to share with listeners? Send them to imacd@informus.ca
IAN
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 273
2nd of May 2026
Safe Dividend Investing
SO, YOU WANNA GET RICH QUICK?
Greetings to investors all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast #273, recorded on May 2nd of 2026. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald. I am the author of seven investment books. My latest book was “Achieving Financial Independence Safely – 200 NYSE Exchange Stocks Analyzed and Scored”. It was available for delivery from Amazon on January 3rd. Those trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange can go to my book Canadian High Dividend Investing – 215 Scored Stocks.
To learn more about the benefits of my seven 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”. On Amazon you will find sample chapters and reviews by investors.
In podcast 271 I asked listeners to tell me why they had become self-directed investors. Eddie in Vancouver responded with the following:
“I am in my 50s and mostly invest within my Registered Retirement Savings Plan & Tax-Free Savings Account. After losing thousands of dollars in two major market crashes, I contemplated investing in dividend stocks but always worried about a bear market.
After finally listening to your podcast, I realized that yes, indeed, you can't lose money unless you sell the stocks. It is a totally reliable income. Dividends get pumped into your account and the stock prices increase over time. It really does work that way over time. Who knows what other money might come in in the future, but this is all money that I'm aiming for my retirement. I really have a long-term goal in mind.”
Eddie went on to offer a word of advice. “If you see a stock skyrocket, do not sell it. If you are tempted to sell it, you should only trim it a little bit, if you really can't help yourself. Who's to say the stock you just sold won't go up even more, and the stock you bought instead won't go down. So, my top advice is, don’t ever sell a stock that you spent time researching and spent the money to buy. Worst case. You can trim it. NOT MUCH IS GAINED FROM SELLING (OR TRIMMING) ONE DIVIDEND STOCK AND BUYING ANOTHER, FOR NO GOOD REASON!
After being a stock speculator for so long. It is very hard to change your ways and just hold stocks. It does take time to become a strictly dividend stock investor without speculating. Let time do its thing. Buy and hold forever. Buy and hold really works overtime.
You can follow financial news, general news, and news on your specific stocks that you have invested in. But don't listen to the hype which gets spewed on a daily basis in the financial news shows.
I’m getting much better at the discipline of just holding. This takes years. One thing that helps is that it gets tiring being glued to the screens watching the roller coaster of stocks’ ups and downs.’
I wish to thank Eddie for sharing his experience with us.
It seems for almost all my life I have been bombarded with exciting investment advice that said success in investing can only come from joining the mob and immediately buying the next hot stock. This was usually accompanied with the words “If everyone is buying it, it must be good”. It was usually a stock you could buy for a few dollars which you were assured would soon be worth hundreds of dollars and could then be sold for a big profit. I was always advised to put all my money into just this one stock to maximize my profit when it became popular and its share price soared in value.
The best example of speculative greed in a hot stock that I have ever encountered was what happened to the shares of BRE-X Minerals. This investment opportunity occurred not that long ago.
BRE-X was a small Canadian gold mining exploration company. It was initially listed on the Alberta Stock Exchange in 1989 at 30 cents a share. This small exchange catered to junior mining and oil companies. For a modest investment of less than $20,000 a year a small company could raise money and investors could buy and sell shares on this exchange.
By 1990 the BRE-X shares had more than doubled to 75 cents. Things really took off when in 1994 BRE-X geologists reported that their exploration drilling in Indonesia showed they had discovered millions of ounces of pure gold.
This find was quickly promoted as the largest gold find in history. Comparisons were made to the Klondike and the California gold rushes. By 1995 BRE-X shares had climbed to $59.00 a share. Speculators around the world leaped in went with dreams of yachts and mansions dancing in their head.
By 1996 the shares hit $286.50 a share. This would be equivalent to $555.81 in today’s dollars. Its market capitalization exceeded $6 billion.To keep up with the demand for BRE-X shares, they were quickly listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ.
You see similar speculation in today’s stock markets when you compare BRE-X to many of today’s hot AI speculative stocks today. For example, stocks like META which is currently trading at $611.91 even though it has much more to recommend it than BRE-X had.
BRE-X hit their high share price without one ounce of gold ever have been mined. The BRE-X share price was all pure speculation. It takes about ten years to bring a gold mine into production. Only then would it be possible for a mine to be profitable. This has echoes of the new AI companies saying it will be seven years before they make a profit.
Millions of investors had bought into an illusion. This supposed mountain of gold was created by greedy con artists who had blasted gold dust into the core samples that had been presented as proof of their rich find. The fraud got detected when third party geologists determined that the gold that had been blasted into the samples came from gold panned from river sand beds and not from the drilled rock samples. With this news the stock price collapsed.
Billions of dollars were lost by investors, funds, governments, pension funds and other speculative forces. The share prices had a value of zero when the company went bankrupt in 1996.
No criminal charges were ever laid against anyone because the mine was in a remote location in a foreign company. Securities charges were laid against a director of the company, but he was acquitted at trial.
If you really must chase after quick riches by spending thousands of dollars to buy shares in the latest hot stock, try to remember BRE-X.
I recommend that you only invest 5% of your wealth be invested in an unprofitable speculative venture with no proven record of financial success. Accept that, you have no control over such a stock’s share prices or future profits. Otherwise, be prepared to face the fear that every dip in the share price may be a warning that your ride to quick riches is over and not just a pause before an increase.
If the share price should decline to zero or a small fraction of what it once was, the impact of the 5% loss will hurt but the hurt would be minimal if you have invested an equal amount in each of 19 other stocks that are proven to be financially strong and have paid ever increasing high dividends accompanied by ever increasing share prices. for ten or more years.
These other 19 stocks will grow in value on average about 10% a year and will pay out dividends exceeding 6% each year. The strength of the 19 will easily offset your speculative loss and keep your retirement portfolio growing safely.
All the factual financial information you need to make sound, logical stock buying decisions is available instantly on the internet and it is free of charge. Only invest in stocks that you have personally screened. It takes just a few minutes. My books show you how to do it.
That’s all for this week folks.