03-26-2014, 07:03 PM
(03-19-2014, 03:59 PM)TomK Wrote: I think what it boils down to for me is that dividend growth rates are backwards looking. A company that has grown the dividend by 20 percent on average for the past five years is almost certainly not going to be able to maintain that pace for decades.
Robert Allan Schwartz has a web site that tracks dividend histories. One of its features is a list of companies that have increased their dividend by at least X% per year for at least Y years: http://www.tessellation.com/dividends/streaks.html
The longest streak of 20% increases is 9 years, and only one company has done it, ARG, and its current yield is 1.8%. This is the type of statistic that has prompted me to invest in medium- to high-yielders for the majority of my portfolio. That 'two in the bush' is often a very small 'two'. As a retired investor who spends some of my dividends, I am much more interested in current yield that in the total return you get with stocks like ARG.