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--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.
Read more here: Dividends: Pros, Cons, Sources and Strategies
