Why Income Investing Will Not Give You Income | Common Sense Investing - YouTube

In my last two videos I talked about high yield bonds and preferred shares.

These are two alternative asset classes that investors venture into when they are seeking

higher income yields.

I told you why you might want to avoid those asset classes.

Today I want to tell you why focusing on investing to generate income is a flawed strategy altogether,

and why a total return approach to investing will lead to a more reliable outcome.

Investors often desire cash flow from their investments.

There are blogs, books, newsletters, and YouTube channels dedicated to income investing.

Income investing means building a portfolio of dividend paying common stocks, preferred

stocks, and bonds in an effort to generate sufficient income to maintain a desired lifestyle.

The idea is that if you have enough income-paying securities in your portfolio, you will be

insulated from market turbulence and can comfortably spend your dividends and coupon payments regardless

of the changing value of your portfolio.

There is a perception that if you never touch your principal, you won’t run out of money.

It seems like a fool-proof retirement plan.

But is it, really?

I’m Ben Felix, Associate Portfolio Manager at PWL Capital.

In this episode of Common Sense Investing, I’m going to tell you why income investing

will not give you more income.

This video is in response to a question from Joey, who contacted me by e-mail.

Let me start off by saying that there is no evidence that dividend paying stocks are inherently

better investments than non-dividend paying stocks.

There are five factors that explain the majority of stock returns.

Dividends are not one of these factors.

For example, we know that if you gather up all of the small cap stocks in the market,

they will have had higher long-term returns than all of the large cap stocks in the market.

Based on this, company size is one of the factors that explains stock returns.

The same evidence does not exist for dividend paying stocks.

If they aren’t better inherently investments, why do people like them so much?

In a 1984 paper, Meir Statman and Hersh Shefrin offered some potential explanations for investors’

preference for dividends.

If they have poor self control, and are unable to control spending, then a cash flow approach

creates a spending limit - they will only spend income and not touch capital.

Another explanation offered in the paper is that people suffer from loss aversion.

If their stocks have gone down in value they will feel uncomfortable selling to generate

income.

On the other hand, they will happily spend a dividend regardless of the value of their shares.

There’s a problem.

As much as a dividend may seem like free money, the reality is that the payment of a dividend

decreases the value of your stock.

If a company pays twenty million dollars to its shareholders as a dividend, the remaining

value of the company has to decrease by twenty million dollars.

The investor is no better or worse off whether the company that they invest in pays a dividend

or not.

This is known as the dividend irrelevance theory, which originated in a 1961 paper by

Merton Miller and Frank Modigliani.

I have just told you that whether returns come from dividends or growth does not make

a difference to the investor, but there is an important detail for taxable investors.

There is no difference whether returns come from dividends or growth on a pre-tax basis.

On an after-tax basis, the investor without the dividend is in a better position because

they could choose to defer their tax liability by not selling any shares if they don’t

need to cover any spending.

The dividend investor is paying tax whether they spend their dividend or not.

This is a big problem for an investor who does not need any income at that time.

About 60% of US stocks and 40% of international stocks don’t pay dividends at all.

Investing only in the stocks that do pay dividends automatically results in significantly reduced

diversification.

Dividend investing can also lead to ignoring important parts of the market.

There are plenty of great companies that do not pay dividends.

Ignoring them because they do not pay a dividend, which we now understand is irrelevant to returns,

is not logical.

A good example of this is small cap stocks.

An income-focused investment strategy will almost certainly exclude small cap stocks,

few of which pay dividends.

Now, don’t get me wrong, dividends are an extremely important part of investing.

One dollar invested in the S&P/TSX Composite Price Only Index, so excluding dividends,

in 1969 would be worth $14.37 today.

The same dollar invested in the S&P/TSX Composite Index, which includes dividends, would be

worth $64.59.

If you are investing in Canadian dividend paying companies, you also receive favorable

tax treatment on your dividend income.

Dividend paying common stocks are an important part of your portfolio, but a dividend-focused

portfolio leads to tax-inefficiency for taxable investors, poor diversification, and missed

opportunities.

A total-return approach, accomplished by investing in a globally diversified portfolio of total

market index funds, results in greater tax efficiency, better diversification, and the

ability to capture the returns that the market has to offer.

The topic of dividends tends to get people very excited.

Dividend investing is almost more of a lifestyle than an investment philosophy.

I would be happy to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Join me in my next video where I will tell you why active fund managers don’t protect

you in down markets.

My name is Ben Felix of PWL Capital and this is Common Sense Investing.

I’ll be talking about a lot more common sense investing topics in this series, so

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I want these videos to help you to make smarter investment decisions, so feel free to

send me any topics that you would like me to cover.