Every November when it comes time to renew the domain name for this blog, I promise myself that I'll write more in the new year. My best intentions usually lose steam in late January or early February. In order to recreate the spark, here is the fourth of what could best be described as 15 30-minute, quantity over quality, blog entries.  Recently at work, a colleague and I conducted the second round of interviews for credit analysts, talking to six candidates. The last question we asked each candidate was “What do you feel is the best ratio to determine the credit worthiness of ..read more

Every November when it comes time to renew the domain name for this blog, I promise myself that I'll write more in the new year. My best intentions usually lose steam in late January or early February. In order to recreate the spark, here is the third of what could best be described as 15 30-minute, quantity over quality, blog entries.       With dividends flowing in regularly, on top of my regular monthly contributions to my investment accounts, and a decent amount of cash in my TFSA and unregistered accounts at the end of the first quarter, here are some of the ..read more

Every November when it comes time to renew the domain name for this blog, I promise myself that I'll write more in the new year. My best intentions usually lose steam in late January or early February. In order to recreate the spark, here is the second of what could best be described as 15 30-minute, quantity over quality, blog entries.       Many dividend growth investors choose to use dividend reinvestment plans (“DRIPs”) to add shares to their positions instead of receiving their dividends in cash. With some DRIP programs offering shares at a discount to the current shar ..read more

Every November when it comes time to renew the domain name for this blog, I promise myself that I'll write more in the new year. My best intentions usually lose steam in late January or early February. In order to recreate the spark, here is the first of what could best be described as 15-minute, quality over quantity, blog entries.  Since I love hearing about how people decided to adopt a certain approach to investing, I wanted to share my “origin story”. Like most 20-somethings, I started to make lots of mistakes after I opened my self-directed brokerage account. A couple of my first pu ..read more

My apologies for the jumbled format below, but in an effort to write at least one monthly entry, I’m choosing good-enough over perfection.  Goals: At the start of 2022, I set a goal to increase my forward dividend income by $4,600, while targeting a dollar- weighted organic dividend growth rate of 5.0%. I’m proud to report that I overshot my goal,  raising my forward dividend income by $5,300+, while achieving a 5.3% organic dividend growth rate.   I’m taking my foot off the gas a little in 2023, aiming to add $3,200 (now, a bit more than that after Algonquin&nb ..read more

In 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021, I shared a list of Canadian companies that provide dividend growth guidance. I've decided to update this list as I find dividend growth guidance, specifically when it is expressed as a percentage, useful in helping me assess the capital allocation plans for companies, introducing a soft control by which to judge management's actions, and assisting me in projecting the organic dividend growth rate of my portfolio for 2023.  The table below could be considered a starting point for further research. Please, let me know of any other Canadian ..read more

Although I try not to spend too much time hanging out on Twitter, @thedividendguy had an interesting question last week about why people buy the Bank of Nova Scotia ("BNS") over other Canadian banks. The question was worthwhile given BNS has underperformed its peers over the past five years, and is down about 20% over that period if you don't include dividends received. Reading through the answers of others, and then writing my own, made me wonder if BNS was worth owning at all. Without diving too deep into numbers, I thought it would be worthwhile to think about some of the top reasons B ..read more

As I've touched on in my Transactions Journal this year, I'm experimenting with owning some companies that are less inclined to pay dividends, and more focused on pursuing growth strategies. This is clearly a departure from my usual dividend growth holdings, and I wanted to provide context around my thinking behind the experiment. One of primary reasons for undertaking the experiment is that my current Investment Holdings are doing a great job of generating rising income through dividend/distribution growth. The big downside of that growing income is that by living in a province with one ..read more

In May 2016, I posted about my ETF experiment involving buying VCN (Vanguard FTSE Canada All Cap Index ETF) and VXC (Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap ex Canada Index ETF) for my son's Registered Education Savings Program ("RESP"). Although this was a clear departure from my normal dividend growth investing strategy, the main reason that I pursued the strategy was simplicity. Having added my daughter to the RESP after she was born in July 2017, the two stock portfolio continues to be straight-forward, as shown in the below diagram.  On a yearly basis, I spend about fifteen minutes on the stra ..read more

 "Selling your winners and holding your losers is like cutting the flowers and watering the weeds." - Peter Lynch An ongoing theme of my purchases in recent months is adding more to my positions in companies whose shares have increased in value ("winners"). Acknowledging this reality led me to explore the reasons behind this choice. Below are some of the key reasons why I have chosen to follow Peter Lynch's advice. Accelerate the Compounding Process Letting the power of compounding work for you by not selling winners early can lead to huge gains. My small October 2013 purchase of Microso ..read more