Written by: Wealth Effect Blogger Waiting outside the football stadium after every home University of Southern California football game, is a row of street vendors eager to sell their bacon wrapped hotdogs they are grilling along with onions and peppers right in front of you. The smell of all that bacon cooking is simply intoxicating. Then they start calling out to you “Hotdogs! Get your bacon wrapped hotdogs! Hotdogs! Get your bacon wrapped hotdogs!” and it makes you want it even more, even if you’re not hungry. (For those of you who are not fans of hot dogs or bacon simply imagine the smell of freshly baked cookies that makes you want to eat one even if you are not hungry.) So far I have been able to resist the calling of these deliciously smelling treats but I know one day when I am faced with a combination of hunger and the sight of a perfectly cooked dog I’m afraid I just might crack and purchase one. Wall Street firms are also trying to sell products to a population hungry ...

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The Dividend Guy has been very generous. He has provided me an excellent guest post for you over on The Dividend Pig. The post is from a chapter of his new eBook, and is titled: Four Quadrants for a Better Understanding of Your Portfolio. It’s a great post with an easy to use analysis that will help you become a better investor. It will help you become more informed about the dividend stocks you purchase. That analysis involves the use of quadrants. The material comes from Mike’s new eBook, Dividend Growth: Freedom Through Passive Income. In this article, Mike uses quadrants to analyze and compare:  dividend yield, dividend growth, and payout ratios. He shows you how to apply quadrants in comparing these ratios. It’s not overly complex, and when you see the methodology, you will quickly realize how effective of a tool it is to help you initially select quality dividend stocks. From his new eBook, Mike writes: Quadrants have been used over and over for several purposes. Companies ...

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Life isn’t perfect and for whatever reason we purchase stocks we shouldn’t have bought, lured in by the high yield, or still hang on to stocks we should have sold. Investor confidence in a company can be sudden and swift. In the case of TransAlta Corp (TA) for example (which I don’t own) this was pointed out in a recent post by John Heinzl. Management decisions over the sale of the  Sundance coal plants, and the looming threat of a dividend cut, have pummelled the stock price. TA closed at $16.81 per share today, down -20.5% from a recent high of $21.15 per share on February 26th. Back in October, TransAlta was trading over $23 per share. As well as the dividend yield now close to 7%, investors have also been concerned with TransAlta’s high dividend payout ratio at 89.2%, which is high even for a utility – it used to be over 100%! Pengrowth Energy (PGF), a smaller oil and gas producer with a crashing share price (one of my smaller holdings), has left the dividend yield ...

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Written by Hank Coleman There is a lot of talk about great dividend stocks to purchase for the long-term. But, how do you weed out the great dividend paying stocks from the hundreds of good or mediocre ones? There are a few key metrics that dividend investors need to consider before purchasing their first share. Here are a few of the biggest metrics to consider. Dividend Yield Dividend yield is simply the annual amount of dividends per year per share dividend by the price per share of the company’s stock. For example, Apple recently announced that it was issuing a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share or $10.60 per share annually. With Apple’s share price currently hovering around $600 per share, its dividend yield is 1.76%. A company’s dividend yield provides investors with a way to visually see how much of their investment is being returned to them each year in the form of dividends issued by the company. Dividend Growth Rate Another key dividend metric that investors should consider ...

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written by Hank Coleman My father-in-law was a bank executive for over thirty years at a large regional bank in the United States, and he amassed quite a bit of his company’s stock through options over his career. Now, in addition to his pension, he also has quarterly dividends that support him in retirement. That is the beauty of dividends. They are truly a passive income investment in most cases, and they can often help you to get more out of your finite investment resources than other options allowing you to more efficiently save for retirement. How Much Do You Need? I used to watch the share price of my father-in-law’s bank like a hawk. It gave me something great to talk to him about when the conversation lagged around the dinner table. I was amazed after a particularly brutal quarter of share price decline when he told me that he did not care because he was not interested in selling his shares. He only wanted the dividend and the security that the payments brought him in retirement. ...

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