Dividends: Pros, Cons, Sources, and Strategies

Aren't you tired of all the talking heads on TV screaming for you to "buy! buy! buy!" and "sell! sell! sell!" the same stocks day in and day out? Aren't you tired of all the self-important commentators telling you that "it's a trader's
market"?

You should be. They've been screaming the same thing for decades, all to their audience's detriment.

It's common sense, really. If your retirement hinges on stock prices going up, you are not investing. You're hoping. You're gambling. You might as well add baseball cards and comic books to your nest egg. Or go to Vegas. At least there the odds are pure and you'll have a good time losing your money.

Companies have no more control over their share prices than you do. Some years they are up, some years they are down, but only rarely, if ever, do they reflect the underlying business. If you're relying on capital gains to fund your retirement and there's a stock market crash, that means you can't retire--even if the underlying businesses are as profitable as ever. How crazy is that? There has to be a better way than playing this rigged game.

There is: dividends and other income generating investments. Although companies have zero control over their stock prices, they have almost complete control over how much of their earnings they pay their owners. That's what you are when you invest in a business: an owner. And there's no point in owning a business if it doesn't pay you.

Study after study, over numerous time periods, shows that buying and holding dividend paying stocks and other income generating assets results in superior returns. And all with less risk.

There are thousands of businesses that want to pay you handsomely for the use of your capital. That's what investing is all about. Those that have capital provide it to businesses that need
it, in exchange for a cut of the profits.

This book shows you where to find income, from dividend growth stocks to preferred shares, master limited partnerships, real estate
investment trusts, closed end funds, business development corporations, and all sorts of other types of investments. (Did you know, for instance, that you can buy royalty rights to oil and gas fields through the stock market and earn a high-yielding, mostly tax deferred income?) The book outlines the advantages and risks of each asset class. In addition, it discusses the costs and benefits of various income strategies from dividend capture to option writing.

The book means to provide new savers with the tools they need to begin investing and veteran investors with ideas, asset classes, and
strategies that might not have occurred to them previously.