consumeronstrike

Cramer Does It Again with CIT Call

On Nov 05 06:04 PM pacalis wrote:

> If you care about dividend yield you should have discussed a dividend
> yield strategy. For example, I hold cash until I can realize x divided
> yield from company abc. That seems to me to be a good general approach.
> However that's completely different from the "win some lose some"
> approach that DCA takes to supposedly address price volatility.

I do not hold cash. And it makes all the sense in the world to me whether or not it does to you. In the area I live there's next to nothing in the way of jobs, and I make anywhere from $16K - $18K a year, probably closer to the lower range most of the time. Poor people trying to hold cash determined not to spend it unless they "really, really need to" find that life will throw just enough "little disasters" their way to nickel-and-dime all their savings away just about every time they manage to think they're finally going to have some. No. I. Do. Not. Hold. Cash. I look at the income in dividends I can get and think what that same money would get me in interest if I put it in the bank, where experience has taught me it absolutely won't be safe for very long, for the reasons I've given above. If I can get 3, 4, or 5 times as much in income from dividends as I would get sticking it in the bank, it looks good to me. Would it be an even better investment at a later point in time? Probably. So just because it would be a better investment later means it isn't a "good" investment now? This is where I differ. I buy income whenever I have the money. In my view, I'm better off increasing my income than I am having that money burning a hole in my pocket. So much better off, in fact, that by this time next year I expect my dividend income to provide the same boost to my standard of living that working a part-time job would. So this makes plenty of sense to me. Also, the extra income I've bought helps to insulate me from being forced to raid my "savings" by unexpected events.

Cramer Does It Again with CIT Call

Some people want to gamble and some people want to invest. I would much rather spend my time buying pieces of solid companies and building up my dividend income over time than speculating on price movements. During the times that one of my companies' price is depressed the dividend checks are still coming in. Your whole argument is moot because I buy shares in companies that I have no intention of ever selling anyway unless their financial situation deteriorates and my dividend is threatened. Losses on paper do not matter to someone intent on building a dividend income. Neither do gains - unless there is a better place to put the money which would result in a higher income, since that's what I am after. Plenty of people are playing your game and, as they put it, would love to "get back to even." I, on the other hand, enjoyed the downturn immensely and took advantage of it with relish. And the checks never stopped coming. If the market crashes again I'll do the same thing I did this time. Transaction costs? Nonsense. Not only are transaction costs small these days, but I only use direct stock purchase plans and my transaction costs are insignificant. All of my stocks are up significantly from my cost basis. So I could sell and take some good gains. So then what do I do? Do I have a better place to put the money where it will generate a reasonably safe yield of between six and seven percent? No, I do not. That money would sit in a bank account drawing a stupid 1% interest if I sold and took my gains. I'm getting more than six times that from my dividends. Income investors are not about capital gains. Their goal is to build a passive income that will replace the income they get from working.

Cramer Does It Again with CIT Call

Dollar cost averaging is so basic it doesn't need to be defended. Dollar cost averaging has worked VERY well for me. As a dividend investor, I look at it from the "other side" though - yes it averages my costs down, but viewed from MY perpective, it averages my dividend yield UP. If an investor invests the same amount of money on a regular basis, the same amount of money will buy more shares when the price is down, less when the price is up.
If you buy $100 worth of stock @ $10 a share
then buy $100 worth of stock @ $5 a share
Is your average price per share $7.50?
No. Your first $100 bought only 10 shares. Your second $100 bought 20 shares for a total of 30 shares. You have invested $200 and bought 30 shares.. $200/30 = $6.67....you've taken advantage of market volatility to minimize your cost basis, and if you're a dividend investor like me, using the market's volatility to your advantage in this way maimizes your dividend yield.

Cramer Does It Again with CIT Call

My nice, safe, dividend portfolio consisting of AEE, AEP, MO, OKE, PEP, PGN, PNW, SCG, and WIN will never make me sad. People who blindly follow Cramer without doing their own research and smugly tell everyone, "buy and hold is dead" probably often wish they'd chosen a different guru. I occasionally like to watch Cramer too, and consider anything he says that seems worth further investigation. I'm way ahead this year, and will be cheering if the market falls and puts dividends on sale again. Gambling will only beat smart buy-and-hold investing in spurts. As for those who will want to follow up my comment with the observation that "buy-and-forget" is dead, c'mon....what intelligent investor anywhere ever really did that?

5 Things to Consider Before Buying and Holding

Capital appreciation isn't everything. You're totally ignoring the fact that millions of people are dividend investors. We don't buy to sell...we buy to KEEP! At least I do. I will only sell if my investment's ability to maintain or increase the dividend seems in imminent danger of being impaired, if free cash flow is slipping, etc. A nowhere market? Fine with me! Is my company's business still sound, is business still good, is its competitive advantage still strong, is it still a market leader, is it maintaining a solid balance sheet and inventories aren't constantly increasing and maintaining financial discipline and allowing itself to become overleveraged? PG has raised its dividend for I think 56 straight years now. What kind of yield on cost would someone now have that bought it 30 years ago? Should this person (who would most likely be living VERY high off the hog on those dividends by now) be thinking, "well, I don't know...maybe I'd better sell now..." knowing without a doubt that PG's ability to pay those wonderful dividends is not threatened in the least anytime soon? I don't think so. Is this person going to panic during some market fiasco such as we had last year? People will still have to buy groceries, no matter what the stupid market's doing. His dividend checks will still arrive. His success depends on the company's ability to make money, not on how the stock does. Either you are a gambler speculating on capital appreciation or you are an investor buying a piece of the business. I know what I am.

Pocket Change Portfolio Update

Isn't this guy obviously an idiot?

Long Term Investing Appears to Have Gone Out of Fashion

Any of you clowns remember what the ARTICLE was about? How about a comment on that?

The 'New Normal' for Unemployment

If this is the 'new normal' that's fine with me. I work at a resort in the Ozarks. None of the "Omigod, the sky is falling" people have any wish to hear anything that doesn't support their phobic outlook but I have worked at this resort for going on eight years. This year is the busiest we have ever been. Sorry. The sky is not falling and I really don't care about all the numbers people can pull up to prove that it is. The vacationers that are forcing me to have to put in more hours per week than EVER are not a figment of my
imagination. Look, I make $8.75 an hour and since returning to work on Mar 1st (I am laid off from mid-Nov - Mar 1) I have saved and made investments currently valued at about $2,600. Hey, I did OK but not THAT OK. They're only up a couple hundred dollars. So since Mar of this year I've saved and invested about $2,400 on my $8.75 an hour. How the hell did I do that? I put in a lot of hours.
Look, I believe the economy's changing. At least I hope so. And I believe there's a lot of people out of work. And I have gotten in more than a few arguments online with some of those "poor, poor, people" that lost their $20, $30, or $40 an hour job and have had to find a new one paying closer to $10 an hour. "You can't live on that," they lament.
The people who are "suffering" the worst, in my opinion, are mostly people who expect to be compensated the same for each ounce of their sweat as I am for more like a half-pound of mine. Perhaps they should, if they think theirs is that much more precious, consider bottling and selling that shit.
I believe the American economy will no longer support union jobs sucking the life from our companies. These companies have to try to recover the cost somewhere. WHERE? People overseas won't spend more for products made by high-paid union workers and guess what? Americans - won't - either. I don't want your five-dollar widget when I can find one just as good in Wal-Mart for two dollars. Get it?
From all the people (Yes, PEOPLE - to hell with the silly numbers you can pop up) I've talked to, people like me are doing just fine. People like me who didn't get to finish college for one reason or another and don't expect to be paid as if we did are doing just fine if we're living within our means and saving money and not piling on debt. This is not an attack on folks with college degrees that SHOULD be paid more for the years of late-night cramming for tests and studying til they got headaches while piling up student loans. I'm talking about all the people no more special than I am who expect to be paid like doctors and engineers. Some folks need a reality check. I make $8.75 an hour, I'm doing just fine and will even retire with a decent dividend income in around ten years or less, but if you are one of those thinking "I deserve full medical & dental, a pension plan and $40/ hour because it "only adds X amount of dollars to the cost of the finished product" I'm suggesting maybe those days are over and maybe they should be.
My pension plan is frugal living and smart investing.
I don't have full medical & dental.
Why should I pay for yours? I'm doing real well and I don't feel sorry that I don't feel sorry for the manufacturing sector that expects to join unions right out of high school and extort wages and benefits most of us don't have and think it's that simple for the company that employs them to foist off the cost of all this onto the rest of us.

Pocket Change Portfolio Update

Tell me how to get that damned "dashboard display" or whatever you call it to move so I can read the whole article. Get rid of it, or tell me how to get rid of it. I hate it and haven't read SA in a month because of it.

The Truth About Jobs

Oh, and SCG.

The Truth About Jobs

Thanks, Expat.
I use direct stock purchase plans and most of my money's going into utilities. I have nine holdings,
AEE, AEP, PGN, PNW, OKE, WIN, PEP, and HOG.
I don't trade, and I'm the ultimate "buy and holder" - like to keep my taxes simple. I buy and KEEP. Some may think it's stupid but I view the money I spend on good dividend-paying stocks as a "sunk cost."
Wish I hadn't bought HOG. I'll add no more money to it unless it either suffers a big drop in price or it looks like its cash flow is improving. When I bought it, its debt/equity ratio was 0.41. A month or two later it issued another $10B in bonds and I knew then I'd made a mistake. Oh well, live and learn.
And the "buy and KEEP" thing? Working wonderfully for me. Forces me to truly look at a company with a long-term perspective. HOG still has a strong brand. Just look through a biker mag sometime. They'll be back.


On Jul 13 04:41 AM expat in China wrote:

> Osarks?
>
> Mr cook you must be good and the word is getting out based on the
> companies growth, be proud and make the owner give you a raise you
> know hes making money. It is true that workers that do the job as
> expected and support the growth of their companies will succeed.
> I am also proud of you because of your hard work and smart choices
> combined with good stock picking.
>
> Can you share some of the names of the dividend paying investments?
> Are there many for sale signs in the area for homes and commercial
> properties?

The Truth About Jobs

Don't like what I said? Awww....poor me.

The Truth About Jobs

One more thing. I do believe some of this stuff. I believe the jobs that are disappearing are high-paying jobs. Probably some union jobs. People who think each ounce of their sweat should cost as much as a pound of mine might have to rethink that, huh? Too bad. Adapt and learn to live on less. I'll be damned if it costs ME $30 or $40 an hour to live. Why should it cost that much for anyone else? At the rate I'm saving and buying good dividend-paying stocks and building my income, I'll probably be done working before I'm 60. I am now 52. And my job isn't threatened because the cost of employing me won't drive my employer out of business. However...if YOUR job is threatened by the fact that I won't quit shopping at Wal-Mart and support your high-paying job by "buying American" I'm not sympathetic to that. Why should people at my level pay more for anything in order to help keep someone making five times more than we do? THIS is the new economic reality. Live within your means and you are limited not by how much you make but by how much you spend. I don't have a college degree. SO...I don't expect to be paid more than someonr who spent years racking their brains getting one. But I'm doing mighty fine with what I have.

The Truth About Jobs

Ok. You poor gloomy downcast people. Thumbs-down me all you want. I'm not working at a resort in the Ozarks that's having the best business it's ever had since I started there 7 years ago. I'm not working six days a week getting up at 4 AM to be in by 5 weekdays and getting up a 3AM to be in by 4 on weekends. I'm not glued to the grill ( I'm a cook) unable to grab a minute's peace for nine hours at a crack (NOT exaggerating). I haven't been able to save $800 a month this summer because I've been putting in so many hours - all while making $8.75 an hour, either.
I also know a few people who work in Branson. They're not sick and tired of day-long ass-kickings by vacationers, either.
Now. I don't know all about all of your numbers and where they come from or how they're compiled and gathered.
But if you're betting real money that the economy's tanking, I'm betting real money it isn't. The people who are making me put in more, longer, harder hours than ever before where I work are not exactly behaving as though they're trying to cut way back because next month their job might be gone. You go on telling each other how bad it is.
This year, because of how "bad" it is, I'll probably save and invest about $4,000 in good dividend-paying stocks. All on $8.75 an hour and a LOT of hours.

Dividend Investing vs. Trading

Graybeard you make too much sense for these people. I really just can't believe nobody else gave you a thumbs-up but me.


On May 27 09:37 AM Graybeard44 wrote:

> I used to own a share of our family farm. Whether we could sell the
> land for $50.00 per acre or $5000.00 per acre, the productive capacity
> of the land remained the same. When we solod the farm, I invested
> my share in dividend-paying stocks. Now, my income is higher, with
> less fluctuation, and a WHOLE lot less work.
>
> During the past year, the productivity (dividends) of my stocks have
> increased, even as the price per share went down. Just as with the
> farm, the real value is in the crop (dividend), not the current price
> of the land (stock).