The Power of Dividend

In stocks investing, you probably heard about the “ growth stocks “, “dividend stocks “, “large-cap / mid-cap “ or “ blue chips “ etc .. and depending on your “desired and expectation” of the ROI of your investment, you may choose what kind of stocks to be included in your portfolio.

For most investors, I am sure you would have included some “income stocks “ into your portfolio as part of the diversification, and also hopefully dividends can keep the value of your investment rising even when market performance sours.

The Power of Dividends: Past, Present, and Future <source: hartfordfunds.com>

Dividends have played a significant role in the returns investors have received during the past 50 years. Going back to 1960, 84% of the total return of the S&P 500 Index1 can be attributed to reinvested dividends and the power of compounding, as illustrated in FIGURE 1.

 

Below quote from J.P Morgan Asset Management :

The power of dividends and compounding

In this simple illustration, an initial investment of $10,000 in the S&P 500 price return index would have grown to over $200,000 since 1970. But if dividend payments were included, reinvested, and allowed to compound over time, that same $10,000 investment would be worth more than $900,000 today.

Further reading on “ The Power of Dividend “

The Power Of Dividend Growth ( from Investopedia )

The Extraordinary Power of Dividends ( from The Motley Fool )

Proof that you can't afford to ignore the power of dividends ( from The Telegraph )

“ Power of Dividend “  on STE’s Portfolio

As you may know that my portfolio very much consists of “dividend stocks “ like REITs / Business Trust / Telco and Banks and I am depending on dividend income to survive for the past 3 years, hence the dividend is very important for me.

How about the impact of dividends on the overall performance of my portfolio?

I have done a quick check on my investment in the Singapore stock market since 2008 :

Total Return XIRR ( including dividend ) = 18.4 %

What happens if I exclude the dividend income, total XIRR would drop to 7.2 % only. Wow! that’s a huge gap of 11.2 % lower if dividends are excluded, but of course, this might be too extreme as in any case, the STI index still gives a dividend yield of around 3.1 %. If we factor that in, there is still a whopping 8% different base on my “dividend income “ investing strategies.

Initially, I was wondering why there is such a big gap and if could it be because of my loss of around -$84,333 (paper + realized, excluding dividend ) in investing in 3 O&Gs ( SMM/SCI/Keppel Corp) and 3 Telcos ( M1/StarHub/SingTel ) which made XIRR without dividend worse than expected.

But even if I exclude these 6 stocks in my analysis, the XIRR only improved marginally by 1 % only to 8.2 %, as such I would conclude that dividends play a bigger role in my journey of wealth accumulation and overall portfolio performance.

How about you? any idea what will be the impact of dividends on your portfolio’s performance? mind to share if you have.

Cheers !!

  PS: Don’t just invest based on yield and beware of the “value trap “ in chasing yield-only stocks, please also look at other aspects of financial analysis e.g FCF / Payout Ratio / Debts to Equity Ratio, etc …

Quote Of The Day :

“Dividends were de-emphasized in the 1990s, but after the dot-com bubble burst, investors once again turned their attention to dividends.” From Morningstar