Dividend Growth Investing Is A Perfect Strategy For Young Investors

Imagine your perfect day. You wake up when you are rested, without the need of any alarm clocks. You then do some working out , followed by having a nice healthy breakfast. You then read at your leisure, have a lunch later in the day to beat the 11:30 – 1 pm crowds, and then review your brokerage accounts. You notice dividends from several companies are deposited today, and you decide to transfer them to your checking account. You check for any major items concerning your portfolio holdings, and spend a few hours researching a new dividend stock.

After that you get more time to concentrate on your activities, be it volunteering at the local homeless shelter, mentoring high school students, learning a new language or simply catching up on some good books. Later that day, you might decide to enjoy a few with your mates/gals. This dream is brought to you by dividend investing.

This is my retirement dream in a nutshell. The reason I started Dividend Growth Investor blog in 2008, is to write down ideas on how to make it happen. I believe that dividend growth investing works for all investors, regardless of their age. However, I do realize that older investors might have a preference for higher yielding stocks, while youngsters like myself can afford to build portfolios across the yield spectrum.

One of the most common misconceptions about dividend investing, however, is that it is not a good strategy for building your nest egg, and therefore it is not suitable for younger investors. Being a youngster myself, I (not surprisingly) disagree.

Younger investors are typically told to take a lot of risks early on, because they have time to recuperate those losses. I find this saying to be very dangerous for young investors. The problem is that taking risk is important, but it should not mean gambling. Investors should only be taking on large risks when they have a strategy with positive expectancy of a positive return, while risk is minimized. If you invest in penny stocks, social media stocks, or if you bought dot-coms during the tech boom of the late 1990s, you took huge risks but you were likely making concentrated gambles. There is a cost to gambling, because losing your entire nest egg of $10,000 at the age of 24 means you will be poorer by $800,000 by age 70. This calculation assumes a 10% annual return for 46 years.

In contrast, with a typical dividend growth strategy, you get a slow and steady approach that will lead to a monthly passive income that will pay your expenses in retirement. Starting out early will be beneficial, because you would gain the necessary experience through trial and error, and find out the nuances that work out for you. This would make you successful, and ensure that you maintain your success in investing. A big part of investment success is not losing too much in your investment career.

With this dividend strategy, we are focusing not on net worth per se, but on target annual dividend income. If your goal is to have a net worth of $1 million dollars, but you end up investing it in a relatively illiquid asset such as a personal residence, you might not be able to retire entirely on it. In some parts of the U.S., you might have to pay $20 – $30 thousand in annual property taxes plus paying for upkeep, maintenance etc. If, instead, you had a rental property generating $4,000 in monthly income or a portfolio of dividend stocks generating a similar amount, you might be set for life.

I believe that a new investor who does not have a lot of money today but who plans on accumulating their “financial nut” over the next years will be perfectly able to utilize dividend growth investing. With this strategy investors turbocharge the dividend income growth of their portfolios by putting money to work every month in stocks that regularly boost dividends, and then reinvesting those dividends selectively.

Since 2008, I have been on a mission to build up my portfolio income. Every month, I save an amount of money that I deposit in my brokerage account. I scan the market for investment opportunities all the time, followed by analyzing prospective investments. I identify dividend stocks for further analysis either by running my screening criteria against the dividend champions or contenders lists, by looking at weekly list of dividend increases as well as through interactions with other investors and the general method of my inquiry into business.

I do a complete stock analysis of each company I find interesting, in order to gauge whether the company in focus has any competitive advantages, pricing power and whether there are any catalysts for further expansion in revenues and profitability going forward. I focus on companies that can grow earnings over time, which will provide the fuel for future dividend increases. A rising earnings stream is also positively correlated with an increase in stock prices. You can have your cake and eat it too with dividend growth stocks.

My goal is to acquire the quality companies identified for purchase at attractive valuations. Entry price does matter to an extent, because a lower price provides a higher margin of safety in the investment and is equivalent to a higher dividend income. Of course, if you plan on holding stocks for 20 – 30 years however, it would not really matter whether you purchased Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) at $70/share or $75/share. If you overpay today however, it might mean that your returns in the first five years might be below average, until the growing earnings result in a valuation compression that would make the stock attractively valued today.

For my personal portfolio, I try to generate annual dividend growth in the 6-7% range on aggregate. My portfolios also yield approximately 3.50% – 4%. I achieve these aggregate figures by stacking three different types of dividend growth stocks, for maximum results. So far, I am able to cover approximately 50% of my expenses from my dividend income.

A few good picks include:

Coca-Cola (KO) engages in the manufacture, marketing, and sale of nonalcoholic beverages worldwide. This dividend champion has increased distributions for 51 years in a row. Over the past five years, Coca-Cola grew distributions at a rate of 8.40%/year. Currently, the stock is trading above the 20 times earnings limit I have set for myself, but yields a very respectable 2.80%.

Phillip Morris International (PM) manufactures and sells cigarettes and other tobacco products. The company has managed to grow distributions by 13.10%/year since the spin-off from parent Altria Group (MO) in 2008. I like the economics of the tobacco business, without the liability stemming from doing business in one country. PMI’s revenues are generated outside the U.S., and therefore are not dependent on a single country’s onerous laws on smoking. Currently, the stock is trading at 16.60 times earnings and yields 3.90%.

Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI) is the general partner of Kinder Morgan Partners (KMP) and El Paso Pipeline Partners (EPB). It also owns limited partnership interests in KMP and EPB. The most important asset is the incentive distribution rights structure, which provide for a 50% share of any future distributions growth over a certain threshold for KMP and EPB. Given the growth projections for energy assets in the U.S., and Kinder Morgan in particular, this stock can achieve high single digit dividend growth for at least the next five years. Currently it is yielding a very attractive 4.20%.

Procter & Gamble (PG) engages in the manufacture and sale of a range of branded consumer packaged goods. This dividend king has increased distributions for 57 years in a row. Over the past five years, Procter & Gamble has managed to boost distributions at a rate of 12.20%/year. Currently, the stock is trading at 17.20 times earnings and yields a very respectable 3.10%.

Let’s see how a portfolio stacks, where a young dividend investor puts $3000/month in 4% yielders that grow at 6%/year.

After five years with this approach, you would be earning $750 in monthly dividend income. Ten years after starting this strategy you will be earnings $2,000 in monthly dividend income. Fifteen years after beginning your dividend investment journey, you will be making almost $4,000 in monthly dividend income. This slow and steady approach is very boring, and it is not as exciting as tripling your money in Tesla (TSLA) in less than a month. However, more investors who focus on long-term wealth accumulation potential of dividend growth stocks will be better off than investors who gamble on the next big growth stock.

An investor with a vision will look beyond the 3%- 4% current yields today, but look at the potential for higher distributions over time. An investor that starts small at a young age, builds a diversified portfolio of income producing securities with growing distributions when valuations are right, reinvests these rising distributions into more stock and continuously adds to his portfolio, will achieve wealth at a relatively young age.

Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1530802-dividend-growth-investing-is-a-perfect-strategy-for-young-investors

Equities: Unlimited Upside With Limited Downside

I’m a huge fan of investing in stocks, as you can probably tell by my almost 100% allocation to the asset class in my Freedom Fund. More specifically, I’m very enthusiastic about investing in ownership stakes with high quality companies that have a history of rewarding shareholders by paying out a portion of profits via dividends. Furthermore, I stick to an even narrower universe of these high quality companies that not only pay these dividends, but raise them on a regular basis (at least annually). I’ve discussed before why I’m such a huge fan of this strategy, known as dividend growth investing. But today I’m going to reveal one of the biggest reasons I’m so enamored with investing in stocks as an asset class, and this can be broadly applied to stocks that pay dividends or do not pay dividends.

With investing in stocks, one needs to consider that the potential upside is almost unlimited while the potential downside is limited to only your original capital investment.You can invest $1,000 with “Company X” and this equity stake can only do one of three things: it can appreciate in value, it can depreciate in value or the value can stay static.

Obviously the least desirable of these three outcomes is that the value depreciates. But this is the true beauty in investing in stocks. Your stock can only depreciate to $0, but nothing more. A stock cannot go below $0. Therefore your biggest downside is losing all of your capital. If “Company X” goes bankrupt and your entire equity stake becomes worthless (actually highly unlikely in reality) you lose all the capital you initially invested. In this case you lose $1,000.

But what if the company becomes wildly successful?

Let’s say you hold your equity stake in “Company X” for 20 years and the company increases in value by a factor of 10. That means your $1,000 investment becomes $10,000. That’s a capital gain of $9,000. And if “Company X” pays dividends your initial investment has a gain that is even larger than this (especially if you’re reinvesting the dividends). You risked $1,000 and gained $9,000 in this case. Think it doesn’t work like that? Doesn’t happen in real life? Think again.

Let’s take a look at a real-life example. 

You could have invested $1,000 in Altria Group Inc. (MO) (then known as Philip Morris) on 5/25/1983, which would have bought you 16.88 shares (closing price $59.25). That was 20 years ago. Those shares are now worth $15,023.80 on a split-adjusted basis (you now have 405.06 shares). That means you only put $1,000 on the line, but received over $14,000 for a gain of 6,390.83%. In this case the downside was 100%, but the upside turned out to be over 6,000%. (Source)

Obviously this is cherry picking a name from the past, but the point remains: your downside to investing in stocks is limited only to the capital you invested, while the upside is theoretically unlimited. Therefore, I feel the reward to investing in stocks far outweighs the potential risks. And this risk can be mitigated further by diversifying your capital into many different companies. I personally plan to have equity ownership stakes with at least 40 different companies by the time I’m done investing fresh capital and living off my dividend income.

This risk/reward relationship is one of many reasons I personally prefer stocks over every other asset class available. 

For comparison sake, let’s take a look at some of the other popular asset classes available: 

With bonds, this upside/downside relationship does not exist in nearly the same manner. Your upside is limited by the coupon (yield) the bond gives you, as well as any potential capital appreciation that may exist by way of interest rate changes which could make your bonds more valuable if yields on new bonds fall (obviously unlikely looking forward as we are in a low interest rate environment). Bonds do not allow you to share in the growth of a company, however, so potential appreciation on your bonds is much less than stocks. The downside of bonds is a bit more limited than stocks, though, as bonds have a higher ranking in the capital structure of a business, meaning that if a business goes bankrupt bond holders are first in line to get reimbursed. However, the risk of capital depreciation is still there, and bonds are more sensitive to interest rates. Bonds have a tighter upside/downside spread in my opinion, meaning the downside and upside are both more limited than stocks. But I don’t want limited upside. I want unlimited upside. Bonds, in my opinion, are much better for capital preservation, rather than capital growth.

Physical real estate certainly has the for potential significant upside, but real estate is hyper-local meaning that values on real estate are specific to a geographical region. Also, real estate is much different from a business. A business produces revenue, and therefore profits, via products or services that it sells to the public or other businesses. Real estate is simply shelter. It doesn’t actually produce anything. Real estate can produce rental income for the owner, however, so income can be squeezed from this asset class. For the most part, residential real estate valuations are tied to incomes. If incomes fall, residence values fall in kind. If incomes rise, people can afford more luxurious abodes, and therefore usually bid up the prices of local real estate. Also, it’s much more difficult to diversify with physical real estate as real estate holdings typically tie up a large amount of capital due to the costs of one physical holding. It’s relatively easy to pay $7 to buy $1,400 worth of Chevron Corporation (CVX) stock. You can’t really do this with real estate. The transaction (friction) costs are much higher, and in most cases you’re not talking about fractional ownership like you are with publicly owned companies. You also have ongoing maintenance and tax costs. Because of this, I would more likely prefer to own real estate via Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) that behave and trade much more like stocks.

Overall, the upside/downside relationship with real estate is mixed. Your downside is not as great as stocks, because the odds of a property going to $0 in value is almost impossible. However, you could purchase a property that needs unforeseen repairs fairly quickly that can drain any available spare capital you have, and local markets could make it difficult for the asset to appreciate appreciably over the rate of inflation. Also, the odds of physical real estate appreciating at the rate of a group of wonderful companies with fantastic products/services and ones that operate with sufficiently high margins is very unlikely. This opinion is backed by the Case-Shiller Home Price Index which shows that home prices as an aggregate have barely appreciated over the rate of inflation going back over 100 years. Also, this doesn’t take into account the value of your time, as physical real estate tends to be more hands-on than stock ownership. Overall, I view the downside of real estate more limited than stocks, but the upside also not nearly as attractive as what stocks have potential for. Also, the difficulties of diversification, high transaction costs, hands-on nature and need for local market knowledge are traits that make real estate as an asset class less attractive than stocks (in my opinion).

I’m not even going to discuss gold or other physical metals. I’ve revealed my distaste for gold before. Upside and downside are completely dependent on what the next guy down the line is willing to pay for your unproductive metal.

And cash is obviously unattractive for many reasons. It will only depreciate over time, as inflation eats away at its purchasing power. So, you’re guaranteed to slowly bleed money while your upside is basically non-existent. Cash is useful, however, when there are few attractively valued opportunities out there. When markets fall, bringing assets back into valuations that are near historical norms, cash can be useful to take advantages of opportunities. Cash is only good when you’re turning it into an appreciating asset at attractive valuations looking out over the long-term.

Some people may think I’m crazy to put almost all my wealth into stocks. But I don’t think I’m crazy at all. I think stocks represent the best possible opportunity to build wealth in a capitalist society.Owning pieces of high quality companies and reinvesting the profits they send you via rising dividends is simply a fantastic way to build your wealth over the long haul. Picking a great group of high quality companies that pay, and increase, dividends while allowing time and compounding to work its magic will almost certainly provide you the greatest risk/reward relationship available. Your downside is limited only to original capital you’ve invested, while the upside is limited to the potential of the company you’re investing in, the price at which Mr. Market is willing to pay for your ownership stake in said business, whether or not you were reinvesting dividends and your own emotional limitations (trying to time the market). Buying and holding quality companies for the long-term while ignoring the noise will eliminate almost every single potential drag on your investment upside.

How about you? Do you enjoy this upside/downside relationship in stocks?

Credit: http://www.dividendmantra.com/2013/05/equities-unlimited-upside-with-limited.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dividendmantra%2FNOGh+%28Dividend+Mantra%29