Weekly Dividend Investing Roundup - December 21, 2007 Edition

Today is my last day of work before the holidays and I am looking forward to kicking Christmas off with some skating with the kids right after work. As I don’t need to go into work at all next week, I am looking forward to lots of time with the family and some well needed relaxation. This week’s roundup is not focused on anything in particular, just a number of good carnivals and articles about dividend investing and investing in general. I hope you find these as interesting as I did.

The Carnivals

Carnival of Personal Finance - How I Would Invest if I Were Just Starting Out

Carnival of Everything Finance - Some New Additions to the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats

Festival of Stocks - Dividend Stock Wednesday: iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index (DVY)

Other Great Articles

The Digerati Life wrote a great article about making sure you consider ALL pieces of a portfolio when looking at performance. Just because one asset or asset class does well, that does not mean you a doing well! Check out When Beating the Stock Market is Really and Illusion.

I love articles that discuss the benefits of investing in dividend stocks. This one from the Globe and Mail talks about dividend growth and compounding using Fortis as an example. (Disclaimer: The Dividend Guy does not own stock in Fortis)

There are a number of different strategies an investor can utilize to take advantage of dividend stocks. I personally like sticking to the buy and monitor strategy and never trade in and out of stocks. Dividends4Life speaks about a particular strategy for increasing portfolio yield in a tax efficient manner in a post titled Dynamic Dividend Investing.

JLP wrote about a good artcile from one of my favorite investment writers - Michael Sivy. It talks about building a simple portfolio for achieving a 4% yield, taking into account withdrawals that a retired individual will want to do during retirement.

I agree that indexing is a solid and most often the best strategy for most investors. I use index funds in my own portfolio. However, the question often comes up as to why people even buy individual securities given all the evidence and research done concerning passive investing. Canadian Capitalist addresses the question, Why does an Indexer pick Stocks? His response is great and I agree with his viewpoint.

Finally, this time of year there are always hordes of articles on “the best stocks to pick for the coming year”. My advice is to take these lists with a grain of stock and do your own research. However, Grow Your Funds presents a list of some interesting stocks which he is calling building blocks. He presents an interesting list of stocks.

Thanks again for tuning in this week and see you tomorrow!