dividend tracking and forecasting post 1

Dividends Are Perhaps the Most Important Factor in Analyzing a Stock’s Performance…

Yet Tracking Dividend Payments and Performance is Almost Impossible for Regular Investors!

You may recall from the January issue published a couple of weeks ago that I mentioned big changes are coming… good changes for you and every other Dividend Hunter.

Some background…

One of the biggest frustrations I’ve always had as an income investor has been the difficulty in getting information about, and tracking the performance of, my dividend investments.

It’s incredible, really.

Depending upon which study you consult, between 50% and 90% of the overall return of a stock comes from its dividends… yet detailed information about dividend payments is almost IMPOSSIBLE to find in most brokerage statements.

Even today, when I get a dividend payment in my brokerage account, it is simply dumped into the cash portion of my account.

My underlying cash increases but there is ZERO information about what this dividend payment does to the overall performance of the stock, to its cash basis or to its total return.

It’s as though the dividend payment never even happened!

And yet this is some of the most important information for a serious income investor.

All this is information that I have to track down, each and every month, and enter into a spreadsheet by hand.

Even then, the calculations are tricky, figuring out how much income each stock or income investment has paid out year to date and what that means for the overall performance of the investment.

It’s enough to make you scream!

Here it is, 2019, and we have all these sophisticated websites and apps on our cellphones, yet the most BASIC information on dividends is still not easily available.

I remember reading that astronauts in the Space Shuttle used to bring their own laptops up into space so they could track their positions visually.

The primitive, 1960s-era computers in the space shuttle did what they were supposed to do. But to quickly and easily identify where they were above the earth, the shuttle astronauts had to come up with their own solutions.

We’re like those astronauts.

Tracking payments over time… figuring out the percentage growth of the dividends year to year… all this is something you and I still have to do by hand.

And that’s assuming (a) you know where to find this information on the Internet or through your brokerage online; (b) you know your way around an Excel spreadsheet and how to use all formulas; and (c) you even have the time to do this.

As you may know, I created a simple Excel spreadsheet for Dividend Hunter Insiders subscribers but even it only covers the most basic information.

While accurate and complete an Excel table is difficult to use for many investors.

Plus, don’t get me started on PLANNING tools! They don’t exist!

There is no easy and simple way to test out various investing scenarios that involve dividend payments.

There is no easy way to do a “what-if” scenario moving money from one stock to another to see how it changes your income.

Or, let’s say you come into a little money, say $5,000 or $10,000, and you decide you’d like to add to your income portfolio.

You might like to see what would happen to your monthly income if you put $10,000 into Stock A… or $3,500 each into Stocks A, B and C.

Right now, that would require a whole bunch of calculations and spreadsheet variables that would make your head swim and still not be sure you have it right.

Well, I’ve had enough of all this!

A few months ago, I decided to take matters into my own hands and began to talk to some computer developers about how to address this problem.

I make my living investing in dividend stocks. It’s high time there was an easy, simple way to track the income and performance of all of my stocks… and, even more important, to easily forecast and test out various scenarios… to see in real-time what would happen to my monthly income if I invested in a series of specific income stocks.

The good news is that, as I suspected, there actually is a way to do this with a computer program.

It’s just that no one has bothered to do it before… at least in a way that’s push button simple for investors like us.

As a result, I’ve asked some computer experts to develop a prototype. It’s in the final stages of development and I can’t really talk about it yet.

Yet I think it’s going to revolutionize income investing.

I don’t make that statement lightly.

However, as a mathematician I do know that accurately tracking performance is one of the golden secrets of successful investing.

Simply by knowing a few key metrics, you can usually outperform 99.9% of the gurus and alleged “experts” you hear on TV and read about in the Wall Street Journal.

The problem lies in getting those metrics! I give many of them to readers in issues of The Dividend Hunter. However, everyone’s portfolio is different – and everyone’s needs are different.

What I would like to have, and what I would like all of my subscribers and readers to have, is a simple, easy-to-use online program that accurately tracks in real-time the performance of an individual’s dividend investments – and easily allows for accurate planning and projections into the future.

Ideally, I’d also like all of the data to be continuously updated by the program so we don’t have to even think about it. Everything we need is simply there, in one complete package.

Well, all this and much more will be here shortly.

Stay tuned. This will be a game-changer.

Back to main dividend tracking and forecasting blog page.

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