Essential to Preserve Capital in Dividend Investing

3 June 2010 Dividend Tree opinion 1 Comment

701183_money As dividend investors, while it is important to focus on dividends, it is also equally important to monitor the risk of capital erosion over a period of time. Dividend growth and intermediate sustainability is good, but it is less likely to be a substitute for significant loss of capital. Pfizer and GE are examples of capital erosion. These two companies were not only able to sustain their dividends but kept with their growth in last decade. However, the value of individual’s holding kept eroding over the last decade or so. For example:

PFE was trading around $43 per share from 1999 to 2002. In last couple of years, it has been trading around $16. At the same time, it has paid cumulative dividends of only $8.22 per share.
GE was trading around $40 per share from 1999 to 2002. In last couple of years, it has been trading around $18. At the same time, it has paid cumulative dividends on only $9.00 per share.

In recent days, four companies viz. BP, Johnson & Johnson, and Procter & Gamble, and Toyota Motors are (were) getting quite a bit of attention in news media. Rarely a day goes by when their woes, or management response to product issues, are not discussed in the financial media or general TV news channels. Three of these four corporations also happen to the good dividend paying companies. continue reading rest of the article….

Five Assets for Hedging Against Dollar Inflation or Deflation

8 October 2009 Dividend Tree Asset Allocation, Commentary No Comments

photo.cms As the stock markets continue to recover (assuming it has not done yet), the talk of inflation is coming back in the news. Our government has pumped in so much of printed money in the system that there is a concern that US economy will experience inflationary times. There is no denying that inflation will take away chunk of our real returns from overall investing returns.

Many of the well known economists and investors (including Warren Buffett) have expressed concerns about inflation. Among all the experts and pundits, I believe, David Swensen gave a very pragmatic and down to earth response to this question in an interview on WealthTrack. According to Swensen, he does not know what will happen. He cannot predict it. There will be inflation if the recent pumping of money supports the economy and growth returns to US economy. If there is no growth, then there will be deflation of dollar value. His message was to address these issues with proper diversification and asset allocation. As individual investors what can we do to (or rather how can we) blunt the effect of inflation or deflation. Following are five aspects one can look into to manage their asset diversification.

continue reading rest of the article….