With markets at all‑time highs and “safe” yields shrinking, more investors are getting trapped by flashy high‑yield stocks that collapse the moment dividends get cut. If you’re building long‑term income, the game has changed: 🔹 Quality > Yield 🔹 Dividend growth > headline percentages In my latest breakdown, I cover: 💡 Why high yields often signal distress, not opportunity 💡 How dividend growth outperforms stagnant high‑yield payouts 💡 A cash‑reserve strategy that protects your retirement income 💡 How to invest when everything looks overvalued 💡 The Buffett‑style approach to treating dividends as fresh capital If you want a portfolio that survives downturns and compounds for decades, maybe you should read this one. https://divistockchronicles.substack.com/p/is-dividend-investing-deadread more
Telus is killing me lately with all this red in my portfolio! Are you guys holding, buying the dip to lower your average, or just selling? Would love to hear your thoughts. 📉📈🤔 #Telus #Investing #Stocks #Portfolio
I’m building my TFSA with one goal in mind: financial freedom through passive income. 💰 Right now, I’m aiming for $500/month in distributions, but that’s just the starting point. My plan is to keep contributing, reinvest the income, and grow the portfolio over time. Eventually, I want to turn $500/month into $1,000, then $1,500 and beyond. 📈 I’m not chasing overnight success. I’m focused on consistency, learning, and letting compounding do its thing. I’ll be sharing my progress here—the good, the bad, the buys, the income, and the lessons along the way. Day 1 starts now. 🚀 CAGE + VDY → wealth-building core HMAX + HHIS + BANK → primary income engines UTES + NSAV → additional income/diversification MSTE + TSLY + BCCL → small aggressive income satellites 🤑🚀📈💰 read more
This week, my portfolio paid me $159.72 in income. My total portfolio NAV return currently sits at 10.61%, with a trailing yield of 54.49% and a yield on cost of 60.63%. The balance is currently $15,413.52. Here is the breakdown: $GPTY paid $4.06, $DRMY paid $7.74. $YRAM paid $8.61, and $CHPY paid $139.31. My NAV return has remained positive since May 2025. Earlier this year, it was above 30%, but the sell-off definitely brought that number down. Even so, the portfolio’s NAV has been resilient and has not fallen below my cost basis. Keep in mind: this has all happened while the portfolio has continued paying huge distributions relative to its modest balance.
Ultra high yield investing isn't only a different investing strategy than dividend growth or growth investing. Rather it requires a different sort of investing philosophy than the typical investor has. It requires a different way of thinking about what a "return" is and when you get to count it. The core of the strategy is the ability to receive realized return through dividends due to great performance, because great performance makes dividends more sustainable, and that allows the "payoff" to happen more quickly. When the underlying holdings are performing well, the distributions flowing into your account aren't a depletion of the portfolio. They're a reflection of it. Performance funds the payout, and the payout is where your ROI becomes real. With a growth portfolio, you can get ROI too, but if you don't sell, it is unrealized. It exists on a screen. It's an effect you can look at but can't touch unless you want to lose exposure to the asset. Occasionally, a vocal minority of growth investors like to tell me my strategy is inferior to theirs. A favorite line goes something like this: "You would have had more liquidity if you bought growth equivalents like $SOXX and $DRAM because those investments outperformed yours in total return." My answer is, "Oh really? If I haven't sold shares and the gain is unrealized, it is not liquidity. It's unrealized liquidity. Could I potentially liquidate SOXX and DRAM? Sure. But if I do, I am losing exposure and if I want more exposure, I will have to buy more shares later on. There are many people who are okay with that, but that isn't the game I am playing." (And, if you are curious of what I am invested in, it's $CHPY, $DRMY, $GPTY, and $YRAM) That's the trap growth investors don't always acknowledge. If they do outperform, the returns sit in the share price, and the only way to convert it into spendable cash is to give up the very thing generating it. Sell shares, lose exposure. Keep the shares, keep the appreciation, but keep it unrealized. The dollar figure that makes them feel liquid is downstream of the shares. The shares are the cause; the dollars are the effect. For point of clarification, when a dividend is paid out, the value of the investment is reduced by it. Your dividend is depleting cash. This is why you need the underlying to perform well or else your dividend stream will shrink over time if you don't reinvest enough of it to keep your capital stable. When the underlying doesn't do well, even 100% reinvestment may not be enough to keep your capital stable during the downturn. Dividends are also paid out on a per share basis. The more shares you have, the more dividends you will get. And, if your investment is increasing in value, staying flat, or only going down moderately, the effects of the dividends can be quite nice. Psychologically, liquidating through distributions is easier. I don't have to make a sell decision. I don't have to forfeit a single share. The portfolio pays me out of its own performance, and my exposure stays exactly where it was. If I hold on to the shares long enough and my investment performs well, I will reach a return on investment where my paid out dividends exceed my initial cost basis. This is not theoretical as it would be if a growth investor's investments reached a value 2x their cost basis. Rather, it is a realized return on investment because returns from dividends are realized the moment they are paid out. Studies have shown that the majority of retirees feel more comfortable with collecting income from dividends than they do selling shares. None of this is to say growth investing is bad. It's a great strategy, and I'd never tell someone their approach is wrong for their goals. And, dividend investing is not objectively superior to growth investing. This is because the fruit of any investing strategy should be weighed by the goals of the investor. But since a vocal minority of growth are often quick to criticize mine, well, I enjoy counter punching. As a philosopher named Gordon Haddon Clark once said, "I love a good brawl." The two main considerations in my strategy are total returns and liquidity. I target outperforming sectors, and sometimes individual companies, so my portfolio can potentially outperform the market and give me the option to extract more liquidity without selling shares. Liquidity on demand, on a per share basis where exposure never shrinks. Many people who invest or advise others on investing think about the accumulation phase of investing and not the distribution phase of investing. I tend to think more about the latter than the former. The reason why is because I am thinking about what I can do with my money and how I can do whatever I want with it. I don't want millions in unrealized gains that I'll never touch in my life time. I'm not trying to win a contest. I'm trying to benefit from my investments in the easiest way I can while still meeting my investment goals. If I do well, I can get a return on investment in less than five years with ultra high yield funds (20% plus yields). In this case, When I say ROI, I mean distributions received versus cost basis, not price appreciation. By that measure, I'm currently at about 80% ROI since August of 2024: roughly 80 cents of every dollar I put in has already come back to me as cash distributions, while my shares, my exposure, remain fully intact (and have appreciated overall). That is a realized return. No selling required. And, the investing is still paying me despite me having taken more than my cost basis. It is house money at this point. I plan on adding $15,000 in November or December, so that statistic will likely change. That's the nature of the approach: it stays in motion, and the outlook that makes it work is the one that measures progress by what has actually been paid out, not by what could be, if only I were willing to sell the shares that generate it.read more
The objection I get every week: how do you retire on a portfolio yielding 1.5%? You build your own dividend. Treat the portfolio as a holding company. You are the CEO, and your job is to pay yourself a distribution. It can come from dividends, interest, fund distributions and capital gains. That puts you in control of two things at once. Which businesses you own, because you are no longer forced into high yield names to hit an income number. And your income, because you set the amount instead of waiting for a board to set it. The dividend still matters. It funds part of the payment and confirms the business is healthy. It stops being the only source. Free webinar Thursday, September 17 at 1 PM ET, on building that retirement paycheque: https://bit.ly/4xGPSQAread more
Many weekends, you’ll find me cleaning, organizing, and tidying up. 🧹 I find this practice therapeutic, as it provides me a platform to do a better job at everything (including my investing) during the work week. 📈 Moreover, doing this work myself ensures quality while saving money. 💰 Last, this practice reminds me that I’m not above any task. Humility is key, and all jobs are important. 🔑 I always tip housekeeping during hotel stays, as I value cleaning work with very high regard, and I feel cleaning staff is underrated. (Disc: Not investment advice.)
Dividends don’t automatically give you a better return but they can change how you behave. Seeing cash hit your account from stocks like $KO, $ENB, $CVX , or ETFs like $SCHD and $VDY can make investing feel more real. That can make it easier to keep holding, reinvest, and stay consistent when the market gets rough. For some investors, that psychological benefit matters just as much as the yield. I personally am in the middle of starting a position in dividends. Do dividends help you stay invested? Or is growth what you prioritize ?
Stay humble with your investing. We are in a new kind of environment with the 10-year Treasury sitting at ~2006 levels. Many of us do not have extensive investing experience with interest rates at current levels, and the implications across the entire portfolio. It's a great time to move slowly, practice prudent diversification, have a long-term approach, and remain thirsty for knowledge. I still see a world of opportunity and will continue to average into high-quality dividend growth stocks, but I do not believe the quick and easy gains are going to be as readily available in this environment. Patience will be key, which is thankfully not that difficult for long-term, DGI investors. The silver lining: Current yields should (continue to) adjust (to higher levels) to reflect the "risk free" rate, which means higher starting yields on net new (and reinvested) capital. (Disc: Not investment advice.)
The market is always changing, and nobody knows exactly what comes next. I’m focused on staying consistent, diversifying, and thinking long term. I’d rather build wealth slowly with quality investments than chase quick gains. Patience and consistency will always be part of my strategy.
Added 109 shares of BIGY this morning at $16.09, bringing my average cost down to $19.38. Betting on the Clarity Act vote passing tomorrow — that would be a positive catalyst for BIGY given its holdings in Coinbase and Strategy (MSTR). My prediction for Wednesday’s interest rate decision: rates stay unchanged at 3.75%.
It was a volatile day in the market today. Right now, Fidelity, which only tracks capital appreciation on the main screen, has me up 7.5% since inception (August 2024) despite my yield on cost of approximately 46% (probably a bit lower now) with a trailing yield of about 40%. If the chip sell-off continues, I plan to keep buying $DRMY , since it mainly does put spreads and call spreads and has the ability to recover quickly in a bull run. My $CHPY position is already pretty well established, and I typically only buy $GPTY when it's in the red. When $DRMY recovers, I will continue to buy $YRAM as I have been doing. The news never really knows what is going on with the market, and I'm quite convinced that they often make up reasons for why it goes up or down because, well, who the hell knows why the market does what it does? Today, the claim is AI safety fears: Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, called for a slowdown of AI development due to safety concerns. Basically, AI is now being used as a tool to create better AI models. The fear is having something we don't fully understand developing the new AI models — if it does something harmful, we may not realize it until it's too late. I always compare AI prompts to "Da Rules" from The Fairly OddParents. The Fairly OddParents is a humorous lesson in "be careful what you wish for." Often, Timmy's wishes, granted by his fairy godparents, backfire, and he then finds out there is some technicality in "Da Rules" that keeps them from simply undoing the wish. If you prompt the AI carelessly, it may have unintended consequences. For example, an AI may break into a database in order to test the database's security (and that has happened before). Semiconductors are in high demand because of the AI buildout. People fear that a potential slowing of AI development will decrease demand. I say it's immaterial. Semiconductors that are suitable for large-scale AI implementation are already on back order. A slowing of AI development will not change that in a way that matters. And, if you are on the hardware side of AI, you benefit from massive profits, which bode well for your investments. People point to the circulation of money in the AI/Semiconductor sector. Well, that is how economies work, pal. They aren't just passing money around like some are alleging. There is material and identifiable demand for the products and services that are being purchased. And, it is unlikely that anything can be done to slow down AI development. It would kind of be like Prohibition: it's not really effectively enforceable. And it is very unlikely that China, who is doing very well in the consumer-grade AI race and not so well on the military/enterprise side, will slow down their development. China's weakness is largely due to hardware limitations, although they have been able to significantly close the gap with software workarounds. Take note that software companies are going to eventually benefit heavily from AI demand. This will not take away from hardware demand, but it will be one way companies will be able to do more with less advanced hardware. So, this is just a "blip." Semiconductors have a bright future. Nothing has changed. Investors are easily spooked. A lot of people have been going into "defensive" sectors, and I have bought the dip and made money every time they exit the AI/Semi sector, while they get subpar returns in comparison. I will continue to pursue my concentrated bets and extract significant liquidity in the process. I'll reach a realized return on my investment so that any dividends going forward are house money. I am already very close. In fact, I've received 83% of my cost basis in the form of dividends since August of 2024. The name of the game is to get great total returns from outperforming sectors and extracting significant liquidity from those funds without selling shares. I do plan to put another $15,000 or so into this brokerage in November, and that will skew a lot of these numbers.read more
So far, I'm down nearly 5% today. I consider it a short-term blip and I'll explain why in another post later today. This is one of the things you have to deal with when you invest in ultra high yield funds that target high volatility stocks and sectors.
