SAFER BETTER DIVIDEND INVESTING INFORMUS INC 2 Vista Humber Drive, Toronto, ON, Canada, M9P3R7 Tor. Tel. 416-245-4994 & N.Y. Tel. 929-800-2397 ian.macdonald@informus.ca (5 investment books, 3 novels, 100 podcasts, paintings)
My five investment books evolved from the disaster of the 2000 market crash. I lost, almost half of my life savings. The money was in mutual funds that my "wise" financial advisor had foolishly assured me would provide a good income for 30 years. All I had to do was sell 4% of the funds each year to live comfortably on. This comfortable retirement was now gone. How was I now going to survive?
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In the year 2000, I had been employed since 1967 as an executive in the Commercial Risk Information industry, with companies like Dun & Bradstreet, Creditel and Equifax. I built commercial risk sytems. They were used by bankers to safely loan money to businesses, to manufacturers and wholesalers to safely ship goods to businesses on credit, and by insurance companies to calculate premiums to cover their risk. Having lost all confidence in investment advisors, with the loss of my life savings in the 2000 stock market crash, I needed an investment strategy that I could trust. It then occurred to me that investing in the stocks of public companies was just another form of commercial risk. If I could successfully build effective scoring systems to sort businesses from highest to lowest risk, surely I could build a scoring system to sort stocks from the most to the least desirable. Using the same scoring strategies, I built a scoring system that directed me to financially strong companies that would pay reliable high dividends. With such companies I would no longer need to worry about speculators running share prices up and down, because these stock's reliable dividends would provide me with my income. Dividends were not controlled by speculators. Dividends are derived from the wise revenue and expense decisions made by the executives of a company. They result in a profit. From the profits dividends are paid. Every business executive understands that the purpose of their company is to generate a profit. They know that without a profit their business will fail and they will be out of a job. There is no supernatural power running companies. They are run by people just like you and me. I have proved that companies can develop a stable "character" that can be perpetuated for decades. Share prices are only a side issue. Speculators are only influenced by profits, they do not control profits. If you focus on acquiring the stocks of the most profitable companies, your portfolio will grow. The easiest, quickest way to identify the most profitable companies is by identifying those few who have paid ever rising dividends for many, many years. The following is a screen shot of the pages for British American Tobacco, from my latest book, "New York Stock Exchange's 106 Best Dividend Stocks". It shows all I need to make a stock buying decision. It contains 11 subscore calculations that add up to the stocks grand score, not only for the current year but the previous year. In addition I can see stock prices and dividend payouts going back each year to 1999. I also recommend an internet Google search to smoke out any hidden problems. The perfect stock does not exist. While some can spend weeks, even months, trying to determine whether they should or should not buy a stock, with the kind of stocks I wish to acquire, it takes only minutes. No one can accurately predict future share prices. It is easier to predict future dividend payouts.
It was much easier building an effective stock scoring system than it had been to build commercial risk systems. All the necessary information was easily available.
WHAT HAVE I PROVED OVER THE LAST 23 YEARS?
My portfolio is now several multiples higher than it was in 2000, despite my taking out a generous six dividend digit income every year. I am still investing some of my unneeded dividend income back into the portfolios. The financial advisor's nonsensical strategy of depleting 4% of my portfolio each year to live on, illustrates that the typical financial advisor has a very limited understanding of how businesses actually function.
In these 23 years, I have been through the 2008 and 2020 market crashes. As I had expected from looking at the historical dividend payout records of my strong stocks the impact of these market crashes was negligible. Several companied increased their dividend payouts during the crashes. Almost all of the share prices again climbed to new record highs.
AN 80-YEAR-OLD FIRST TIME SELF-DIRECTED INVESTOR
In 2018, a friend, an 80-year-old widow, who had been a successful entrepreneur, came to me for help. She had entrusted her considerable life-savings with a financial advisor. In three years, that portfolio had shrunk by several hundred thousand dollars. I reviewed her monthly investment statements and was appalled by what I saw. I showed her, over several months, how to invest the way I did as a self-directed investor. She quickly grasped the importance of the stock scoring software.
She has now not only recovered what she had lost but has doubled her income. Her stress and anxiety of outliving her savings has disappeared.
She pushed me to write an investment book to help people like her. I wrote that book. It is very much a story about how badly she was treated by the investment industry and how she followed my plan to manage her money. I completed that book in 2019. It is:
:
INCOME AND WEALTH FROM SELF-DIRECTED INVESTING
Like all my books, it is available as both an e-book and printed book from amazon.com. One reason she had pushed me to write the book was that she knew I had already written 3 novels. Writing novels is easy. Writing instructional books is not easy, however I enjoyed doing the research. It led to my seeing the need in 2020 for a new book to answer the many questions that investors who had read the first book brought to my attention. . The second book wa
SAFER BETTER DIVIDEND INVESTING
After completing this book I saw a need in 2021 for reference books that would provide much more information on each high dividend stock than had been provided in the first two books. So much information was now being provided on each stock that it required the material to be split into 2 books. One book concentrated on U.S. stocks and another on Canadian Stocks. These two books were:
AMERICAN HIGH DIVIDEND HAND BOOK
CANADIAN HIGH DIVIDEND HANDBOOK
The last book, produced in 2022, was the ultimate evolution of my strategy of making it ever easier for American investors to quickly build a strong, high dividend portfolio. Not only could you compare 11 subscores of a stock with the current year and the previous year but it showed share prices and dividend payouts from 1999 to the present, so you could see how these stocks were impacted by the 2000, 2008 and 2020 market crashes.
You should expect to go through a market crash about every 5 years. During such a crash you can relax, live off your dividend income and watch as your portfolio again returns to its upward trajectory. That last book is:
NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE'S 106 BEST HIGH DIVIDEND STOCKS - ANALYZED AND SCORED
FINDING MY BOOKS
Finding my books on Amazon is easy. Just do a Google seach of my full name, "Ian Duncan MacDonald" and the name of the book and you should be brought to the listing in Amazon. They allow you to read many pages of each book. As soon as you have purchased a copy, send an email to imacd@informus.ca and within 24 hours the software will be mailed to you. The books detail everything you need to know to calculate a score. It takes only a few minutes.
The books are so detailed that you can manually calculate a score without the software. It just takes longer..
In January of 2023 I asked several of my books' readers what impact my books had had upon their investing. These are just a few of the replies I received, many reviews of my books can be read on the Amazon site:
COMMENTS FROM READERS
...Youellr advice has really put me on a good path financially. I'm just on autopilot investing weekly in my brokerage accounts and letting my Roth IRA dividend portfolio grow .
...I have taken your advice from 2021, as you may be aware.Before retiring early (which I finally did some weeks ago) (I am still doing a little extra work two days a week) I wanted to see how much I would yield from my dividends. I ended up making about $77K which of course would then be taxed 15%, so I am certainly able to live off the proceeds.So I decided to do just that. Find attached my recent scores in all 10 variables along with the final score for my 20 stock.I was very pleased with my dividends. All stock gave me a range of dividend percent ranging from 5 to over 10%.
...My dividend portfilio went down approximately 4.9% but my dividends were up 10.95%. A good portion of my last year’s price reduction has been offset by growth this year - to the tune of about half. I think too many people think about years in isolation - that is last year was bad. They think in absolutes like I lost $$$$ not paper losses.
...I have been using a passive investment system since I read two of your books. I am now retired and live only on the dividend income with no need to draw from the principle. The last few years the stock prices have been down but it is no longer a concern as I own good quality stocks that have a long history of paying consistent dividends.
...I have benefitted from your books, so a big THANK YOU.
2022 has been okay for me, I'm down about 4% so no worries, the dividends just keep on rolling and the market will recover one day.
... I've downloaded your previous books and found them very useful. I'm from the UK and the concepts have helped me to pick the stocks I want to invest in. Your stock scoring software has helped me a lot.
PODCASTS - SAFE DIVIDEND INVESTING
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In 2021, to further let the world know that they too can become successful self-directed investors, I began a weekly podcast.
The podcasts are about 20 minutes long. I respond to between 4 and 9 investment questions that have been brought to my attention in the previous week. For example, here are some of the questions I addressed in podcast #103. All the 103 podcasts can be quickly retrieved from all the usual podcasters like Amazon and many others. Thousands of investors have listened to these podcasts. Many have written to tell me how much they "enjoy" them. One reader driving from Virginia to Montreal said he listened to the podcasts for the many hours of the trip.
QUESTION (1) What are some good US stocks to buy for income?
QUESTION (2)Are there any benefits in buying a stock that pays out most of their profit as dividends?QUESTION (3) If the company doesn't get the money when I sell their stock, does this make company's stock value increases?
QUESTION (4) What is a good books on investing in the stock market that shows me how to make money?QUESTION (5) What was the biggest stock market loss you have ever had and how did you cope with it?
QUESTION (6) What is the best method of predicting when to best sell a stock?QUESTION (7)
Is it too late to start investing?
BEWARE THE ABANDONED
A New Mexico, capitalist sect recruits gifted, abandoned street children (often thieves and beggars) from around the world. They educate and shape them into wealthy entrepreneurs whose loyalty is to the sect that saved them from poverty and early death. The sect receives a portion of their wealth for the rest of their life.
As ruthless capitalists, would these recruits hesitate in murdering a rich socialite if her death could save thousands of abandoned children? Can murder ever be justified?
John Cross is one of these abandoned childred who was saved. He is a driven man who will let nothing stand in his way of achieving great wealth. Anyone who dares cross him can end up dead.
The story opens in Paris where John is on a mission to recruit street children just as he was recruited. He returns "home" to New Mexico, one step ahead of the Paris police, to begin his quest for wealth.
Soon, he is once again on the run. Staying a step ahead of the FBI and the mob who are in hot pursuit. We follow him across America to Delaware. Will the sect be able to move their top producer to a safe haven.
This action book with all its twists and turns is a hard one to put down. Like all Ian's books it is available at Amazon/Kindle as an e-book or print book.
DUEL
The Caribbean has always been the United State's private lake. Foreign nations have steered clear of it for more than a hundred years.
The People's Republic of China have become very active in the "Caribbean. The United States is no longer concerned about Caribbean nations embracing communism. They have largely ignored the Caribbean while the Chinese have filled the void of US foreign aid by becoming very active in providing health and infastructure benefits to these nations.
All hell breaks loose when the Chinese decide to establish a permanent presence in the Caribbean by leasing a long abandoned British naval base on the island nation of St. Matts.
The junior senator from Texas sees this threat on its doorstop as a direct attack on the United States and calls for massive retaliation, The State Department sends Rob Lyons to the island to assess the threat. This is done over the objection of the CIA who see it as interference in their intelligence gathering mandate. Assination, romance and monkeys make for an interesting provocative read.
This book like all Ian's books are available at Amazon/Kindle as e-books or print books.
USING DROUGHT USA
An ever diminishing fresh water supply in the US South West could destroy the economies of California, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona. It is an election year. The President wants the votes in those four states.
Most of the rainfall in North America falls in Canada. A friendly neighbor with a small population - about the size of California with a very small militry force.
Could the United States solve its South West water problem by redirecting Canadian water that now flows North through empty, barren land to the Artic Ocean, South to where it is needed by 80,000,000 Americans? China has built canals thousands of miles long to solve a similar problem.
The State Department sends Rob Lyons to Canada to see what it would take to for the separtists provinces in Western Canada and Quebec to step aside and lt the w US "expand" into the Ontario. This would give the US control of the Great Lakes and an immense watershed..
This is a thought provoking, action novel that is disturbing in its posibilities. It is available as an e-book or print book at Amazone Kindle.
INVESTMENT INFORMATION VIDEOS
****** ART ****** Prints of 2,300 of Ian MacDonald's paintings, photographs, and digital art are available for your viewing at https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/ian-macdonald The following original paintings by Ian MacDonald are available directly from him. Only a few are displayed below. More will be added For information on acquiring the following paintings: pricing, sizes & medium, either email of phone Ian directly. imacd@informus.ca Telephone: Toronto 416-245-4994 or N.Y. 929-800-2397
FRONT AND CHURCH artist : Ian Duncan MacDonald acrylic painting on canavas, 20 inches by 16 inches, framed $199.00 (US) plus shipping costs and sales tax
GO FLY A KITE artist: Ian Duncan MacDonald acrylic painting on canvas, 28 inches by 24 inches, framed $999.00 US plus shipping costs and sales tax
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