What I'm going to tell you is about investment, not trading. There is a critical difference between the two: investment is about putting your money in a sound business that you want to own (of course partially) for long-term; on the contrary trading is about short-term speculation and oftentimes, regardless of the soundness of the the business. So if you buy a stock as an investment, you really should not pay too much attention to the daily fluctuation of the stock price as long as you get in with a great value (a discount stock price compared to its intrinsic value) and the company continues to do well.
So how to create an income generator, which will guarantee you to become rich over time? The secret is reinvesting dividends and compounding. There is a widely held misconception among general investors that stocks provide growth first and income second. As soon as people hear about dividends, they would consider it just as a side-income that is nothing important in stock investment. I'd high recommend you to read the research report done by Rob Arnott, a well-known researcher/investor. He studied the stock market returns during the past 200 years from 1802-2002 and concluded that dividends dwarf the combined importance of inflation, growth, and changing valuation levels. I would also highly recommend a great book about dividend investment called The Single Best Investment by Miller/Howard. They did a study of the S&P 500 from 1935-2010 and found that you could turn $1 in the S&P 500 to $93.65 during the period to the end of 2010 if purly relying on price appreciation alone. You may say this is really very good. But you could turned your $1 into $1740 if you reinvested the dividends along the way. So what's the magic? The magic is a compounding machine via DRIPs, Dividend Re-Investment Programs. You may start with a low single digit dividend yield (say around 2-3%). If you systematically reinvest your dividends into the same stock plus a track-record dividend increase by a good company over time, you may suddenly find after 10 years or so that you probably have a double digit dividend yield against your original investment dollar amount plus you have accumulated many more shares of the stock through dividend reinvestment. This would only become better and better if you stick to the system longer and longer. By your retirement age, you may find that you have a reliable income source without you doing anything, month after month with hundreds or thousands or even more coming into your pocket! This is called a passive income, a dream for every investor! The earlier you start with DRIPs and the longer you hold onto it, the better income you will have down the road. Warren Buffet is the master of value investment, epitomizing the DRIPs, which makes him the 2nd richest man in the world. In his 2010 annual letter published on Feb 26, he happened to talk about dividends from Coca-Cola:
| Other companies we hold are likely to increase their dividends as well. Coca-Cola paid us $88 million in 1995, the year after we finished purchasing the stock. Every year since, Coke has increased its dividend. In 2011, we will almost certainly receive $376 million from Coke, up $24 million from last year. Within ten years, I would expect that $376 million to double. By the end of that period, I wouldn't be surprised to see our share of Coke's annual earnings exceed 100% of what we paid for the investment. Time is the friend of the wonderful business. |
Given the powerfullness of this system but requiring a long-term comittment, I'd not only recommend that you start to set up your income generator immediately but also help your kids to do so when they are still young. Remember, the earlier the better!!
I will tell you several good companies to consider for this system in my next blog with the exact steps. It is very easy but you need to know the right way to maximize the effect.
No comments:
Post a Comment