Podcast – Episode 019 – Interview With Trader Mike McNeil
Podcast Transcript
Allen: Alright folks, this is Allen and today I have a special guest. He is a friend of mine, his name is Michael McNeil of DividendStocksRock.com. And Michael’s story is one that we can all relate to because Michael has done what we all dream about which is basically to take the family and the kids, put them in an RV and travel the world. And basically Mike has … he’s been involved with dividends for a while, and so he had his website up which I was following him on his website, and then when he decided to travel all of the North America and South America, I reached out to him, I said, “Hey when you get to Houston or if you get to Houston, look me up, and we’ll get together and we meet.” So I was able to meet Mike and the family, they stayed with us and it’s a wonderful story, so I wanted to bring Mike on. So Michael how are you doing today?
Michael: Hey, very good Allen, thank you for having me today.
Allen: No, no, it’s my pleasure. I’m excited to tell your story, and I want you to tell it because we have so many people … most of our listeners are traders or option investors and one of the things that they keep saying is, I don’t want to spend all my time investing and trading and working, I want to travel. And so you’ve actually done that, so tell us, where’d you go, how long, how’d you do it?
Michael: Yeah, I kind of did it the other way around that many people think they … like you know, when you have such a big project of quitting everything, leaving everything behind and then go travel for a year or more, most people will say, “Okay, I’m going to pay down my debts, save money aside, and then I’m going to just travel the world.” So we decided to do it the other way around, so we just rented our house, and then I quit my job. I used to work as a private banker, and I built my own dividend website. And as we were going through this adventure I was building my company at the same time.
So I have three kids, they were four, nine, and eleven back then, and my wife [Josie 00:16:28], we traveled across North America, so we did the whole west coast in the US, and then we crossed the Baja in Mexico, and then we drove all the way down to Costa Rica where we stayed there for three months. We were lucky enough to be able to rent a house over there, so we had a taste of the central America a little bit more, how to live over there. And then we went back, and on my way back, I had the opportunity to meet with your family and it was a great time in Houston, and then we continued our trip towards the east coast and finally get back home a year later.
Allen: Right, so back home for you is Quebec right?
Michael: That’s correct yeah.
Allen: Cool, awesome. So out of all those places, which was your favorite?
Michael: Probably Guatemala, people there are super nice, and we are actually going back there in March, my wife and I for a week. We missed it, Lake Atitlan is a wonderful place. You know, those people, they are so proud to see Americans or Canadians traveling and visiting their village and their country and they are so welcoming, they just want to hang out with you, ask you questions, share a good meal with you. And the weather is obviously a lot better than what we have in Quebec right now.
Allen: So now, my wife and I, we drove around the US and Canada for a year as well in 2006, but we were actually very scared to go into Mexico and down south. You hear the news stories, you hear, oh they kidnap tourists, all the warnings, travel advisories, whatnot. What was your impression of that?
Michael: Before we crossed Mexico, I will not lie to you, I was very scared. My wife and I were not too sure, but at the same time, we had a huge deposit on the house in Costa Rica so we had to make it. And the funny thing is, once you cross the border and you run a few miles, it feels kind of awkward because the whole scenery changes. And then after a few weeks, you realize that people are super welcoming and they’re happy to see you and yes I’m not going to diminish the whole stories about the drug cartels and stuff like that, but the whole adventure has been just meeting with awesome people one country to the other. And the funniest part is that when you are in Mexico, Mexicans are telling you, “Oh it’s safe here, but don’t go to Guatemala, they’re crazy over there.” And once you get to Guatemala, they’ll say, “Oh, you’re heading to El Salvador? No, no, stay in Guatemala, it’s safe here, and El Salvador, they’re crazy over there.” So you get those … even among those countries, they’re saying the next one is not safe but their place is good.
And you know you have to operate with some basic rules, but obvious ones. I always say, I love Montreal and Quebec, I would bring my kids there any day of the week, but I would not hang around in Montreal north around 2 am in the morning on a Tuesday night. It’s the same thing with central America countries. We never drove past 4 pm, we always looked for a shelter with a family or something like that. We always asked locals if it was safe to stay there. And I would say that the best protection that we had is that we were a family. Over there, the family is probably the most important value that they have, so they would not likely attack or try to steal from a family. So if you’re a backpackers, it’s probably more dangerous than if you’re running with your family.
Allen: Wow, that’s very interesting, yeah. So how did your kids like it?
Michael: They’ve enjoyed it a lot. It was fun for them because at first it was one year with a lot of activities and very small time for school. They got to meet people and make friends all around the world, so we met a lot of other travelers at the same time. So I think it was really good also for them to create a bond together. Now that we’re back, we can see that they’re playing a lot more with each other, they support themselves. Sometimes they gang up against us as well, to make [crosstalk 00:21:03] an argument, so it’s also a good thing to see them so close and so happy to be a part of that family.
Allen: Well that’s wonderful. Mine are little and they’re fighting all the time.
Michael: I’m not saying they were not fighting during the trip though. You know, a twenty five foot RV is a very small place for five people.
Allen: Yeah, so basically you rented the house, you put all your stuff in storage and you guys just left huh?
Michael: Yeah, that’s correct.
Allen: But what about school? Did the kids have to fall behind one year or …
Michael: No actually what we did is that we met with their teacher first, and my wife built a whole program for both of them, for the two oldest and we did school. We left in June, so they didn’t have summertime off, they started their next year right away but while we were in Costa Rica, it was a break for three months while families were and friends were coming over, so we were having a lot of parties over there. So it went very well, but there’s a big difference also being stuck in a classroom with like twenty, twenty five, thirty children and doing one on one stuff with your parents. It went very well, and when they went back to school, some teachers were not too sure they were … you know maybe they were falling behind or something, and after they had their first marks, they were averaging nineties everywhere, so it went very well and they’re actually … we realized that we did more because we were afraid that they would fail, so we made them work more, so now they’re ahead of everybody. So it’s a good thing in the end.
Allen: That’s awesome, yeah. Okay, because that was my biggest concern, with the kids in school and, I don’t know if I have the patience to [crosstalk 00:22:58]-
Michael: Well yeah, that was probably the … I enjoyed every moment of my trip, but probably the hardest part was doing homeschooling. There is always something more interesting like visiting a volcano or going to the beach, or playing around with other kids instead of reading or a book or writing a math test or something like that. So this is always a part of this, it’s a bit more difficult, but we tried to do is that, while we were traveling especially in central America, we tried to stay at the same place for like a week or two at a time. So we could spend … like kids, they knew that they would be spending a few days for activities, and then a few days to work on school stuff.
Allen: I see.
Michael: So they were aware in advance, so it was not a surprise, it was just not like, they wake up one day and say, okay Amy, now it’s time to do two hours of math now. They knew ahead of time so it was easier to tell them, okay, today we’re going to do Volcano boarding, and tomorrow you’re going to write about it or do a presentation about it so they can … we used a lot of things that we had during the travel. For example, when we visited Tikal in Guatemala, those are Mayan ruins, so we had them do a research, so they had to write about Tikal first before visiting it, so it was more interesting for them, but at the same time they were doing school.
Allen: Wow, that’s a great idea. Cool. Okay, so obviously travel is wonderful, it’s a great experience from what you’ve told us, and you guys didn’t have any … you had little hiccups here and there, but nothing major to knock you off your trip. So now the big question is, how did you afford it?
Michael: Well the way I afforded it is that we … and like I said, I didn’t put a huge stack of money aside. I’m rather a cash flow guy, a cash flow generation guy than a saving guy. I’m having a hard time saving money actually, I’m better off with generating new money incoming. So what we did is that we filled this … I’ve been investing since 2003 and I’ve established my own dividend investing strategy since then, so what I decided over time is that I decided to open a blog and share my experience with others, share my results as well, so I’m very transparent, I was always showing people how much I’m making and what are my trades and whatnot. And then over time we felt that there was a need for people to get all this information at one place because there are so much [inaudible 00:25:46] and permission on the internet, but the problem is that you can spend ten hours a day reading stuff on multiple websites and you will never make one trade done.
So we decided to put all this information together and then create a newsletter and the whole investing platform, so people can subscribe to that, to our service and get all the information into an easy package, small package, easy to read, easy to understand, and actionable. So this is how I founded Dividend Stocks Rock, and as I was working during my trip, I was generating enough money to sustain my lifestyle, and now that I’m back home it’s a lot easier. I’m working a lot harder obviously, but then things are picking up, and this is how I was able to finance my trip, and this is how … I’m going to Guatemala in March, and we have Vietnam for two months planned in 2019.
Allen: Wow, cool. So the travel bug hasn’t left you?
Michael: No definitely not.
Allen: Okay.
Michael: Well, the thing is, one of the main reason I decided to quit my job … I mean, I was a private banker and was making good money, had a pension plan and social security and all those benefits asides, but I wanted to be able to work everywhere in the world, and now I only need an internet connection and my laptop and I can do it. You know, the market never sleeps, so I can always work on it.
Allen: Right. Okay, so your main investment philosophy or strategy is to buy companies that pay dividends?
Michael: That’s correct. I actually have 95% of my portfolio, is invested in dividend paying stocks. I couldn’t help it, I had to buy Amazon, and I bought Shopify as well because I believe that the retail industry is going online, so I did get rid of Walmart’s and Target’s from my portfolio and moved them to Amazon. But that’s the only plain not paying dividends that I make, and I’m 100% invested in equities.
Allen: So then I guess the goal is to have enough income from your dividends to pay the bills?
Michael: Yeah, eventually. I mean obviously right now I was working for my business, but in a few years from now, this is my main goal. What I did is I received also … my pension plan, I receive a committed value for it, and I received it back in September 2017. A lot of people are afraid right now to invest in the Stock Market. They’re saying we’re trading at an all time high, we’re going to lose money, it’s going to crash soon. So I threw everybody that I put my money where my mouth is, and I invested all the proceeds into Stock Market, in dividend paying stocks mainly because I don’t have to worry about those strong companies. Yes, their stock price will go up and down along with other market fluctuations. You know, when the market crashes, there are no place to hide. Your money is going to crash too. The difference between, like I’d say, growth companies or gambles that you make and dividend paying stocks, is that if you select dividend growers, those are companies that are usually increasing their revenues, increasing their profits, their earnings and then increasing their dividend payouts.
So they will enter into the recession like any other companies, they will suffer, but in the end of the day, your paycheck is going to grow year after year, and your dividend is not going to cease. So the key here is to build a set of rules that will enable you to find those companies that will not cut their dividend payment. And that will actually increase them during off times, so that in ten, fifteen, twenty years from now, I’ll be able to live off those dividends.
Allen: Okay, so it’ll still take you about fifteen years or so to do that?
Michael: When you want to live off your dividend, it always depends on how much you’re saving and how much you need to live right? I used to be a private banker so I had a client that was … they were able to retire at the age of 45, and they needed only two thousand dollar a month to live on because they had no debts and they didn’t have a luxury lifestyle, so they didn’t ask for much. And I had others that they had to work until they were like seventy five, and even then, I was saying, well you know, according to my financial plan, you can withdraw a hundred and fifty a year, and then a hundred and fifty thousand dollar a year wasn’t enough for them. It always depends on how much.
What I do with my portfolio is that I have a goal that I will eventually live off those dividends towards the age of fifty five or sixty, but now that I’m working for my own company, you know what, I’m only going to work for the rest of my life because I enjoy what I do, and those dividends will probably just be … go directly to my children’s.
Allen: Okay.
Michael: So they are the lucky one who most likely won’t have to work at one point in their life.
Allen: Okay, so the average dividend that you receive is what, about two, three, four percent a year?
Michael: Since I actually focused on dividend growth instead of dividend revenue, there’s a big difference over there. My portfolio is more around 2, 2.5% yielding. The reason why is I’m going to give you an example. If you pick a company like Starbucks, Starbucks’ yield is quite low. If I was going to retire tomorrow, I mean Starbucks is paying at two percent yield, it’s not much. However, it has been able to increase its payment by a double digit dividend growth rate for the past ten years, almost past ten years. Over the past five years, it has been like over fifteen or sixteen percent annualized growth rate. This is what I’m looking for, because those companies that grow their dividend payment aggressively, they are also making this it because they are confident in their company is because they’re making a lot of money as well. So I want to pick up those companies that are, yes paying dividend, but also, showing stock appreciation at one point in time. So
I’m not too much of a [read 00:32:23] guy or a utility guy, I don’t invest much in those, because yes utility stocks for example are nice because they pay three, four, or even five percent yield, it’s steady, increased slowly, but there’s not much [inaudible 00:32:37]. I mean they’re selling gas or they’re selling electricity and they just wait for the next month to sell more gas and sell more electricity. But they don’t grow that much as opposed to a company like Starbucks who shows 8% comparable sales growth in China, I’m more excited about those kind of companies.
Allen: [inaudible 00:33:00]. So then what do you say to the person who tells, oh, yeah dividends are great but those companies are very slow moving, I would rather invest like you said, you know you want to put your money in Amazon, so what do you say to somebody who says, you know I’d rather invest in something like a Facebook or a Google, something that I can make twenty, thirty percent a year?
Michael: Actually I’ve been there for a while. I started investing in 2003, and it’s kind of funny because I got my first job as a credit analyst back in 2003. And the first thing I did during the first week as soon as I got my paycheck is that I asked for a twenty thousand dollar line of credit. I told my wife she’d do some leveraging but just for like three thousand and then a month after, I had like nineteen thousand five hundred invested in the market. And I was doing those kind of trades. You buy something, you sell it three weeks later because there was good news and there was a boom and I was making a lot of money, and from 2003 and 2006, I kept rolling.
And I created a cash down of fifty thousand dollar for my first house just with trading … actually with the banks money, not even with my money. But the thing is, it requires first a lot of time. I was spending easily two hours a day looking at the market, watching news, making sure that my investment don’t go sideways because sometimes when you invest in those kind of stocks, you can lose a lot very quickly. And the second thing is after a few years I started to have children, I had my carrier was building up, I was doing MBA, and then I did … well you know what, let’s do it for another round, let’s buy a second house, and I was trading on my potential cash down, and a few months before I had the lawyer to sign off for my next mortgage, I lost fifty percent of my investment on a single trade because the news that I was expecting wasn’t good enough, and then overnight, I lost fifty percent of my money.
Allen: Wow.
Michael: So for those … yeah, ouch. So I ended up borrowing money from my parents to make up for my lawyers appointment to make sure I qualify for the mortgage, so that wasn’t cool. And then I realized, you know, this kind of aggressive trading, yes it’s interesting, and you will … you know, when you talk about that with your friends or with your family or your in laws during parties, they will always the best shot they had. They will always tell you about that stock that they bought at ten bucks and then sold it at fifty five like a few months later. They will never tell you about all the bad trades that went wrong where they lost thirty, forty, fifty percent even all of their money. And it’s normal, it’s like going fishing, you never tell anybody if you didn’t catch any fish. You just, “Oh yeah, it was okay.” But you know what, a few years ago I remembered that I got this huge fish. So it’s always the same thing.
In dividend stocks, what I realized over the years is that I don’t need to spend two hours a day on my portfolio, it’s a [inaudible 00:36:26] trade forward. I can sleep at night, I’m not going to lose fifty percent of my portfolio. And mind you over the past five years, I’m averaging an annualized rate of return of sixteen or seventeen percent, so it’s still not bad.
Allen: No, not bad at all. In fact I started to … I’ve done a lot more research into dividends in the last few years, maybe like two or three years. And there was this book that really turned me onto them, it’s called … it’s by Jeremy Seagull, it’s called, “The Future for Investors” I believe, oh hold on one second … yeah, it’s called, “The Future for Investors” and actually, Jeremy Seagull, he’s a professor from Wharton University, University of Pennsylvania, and he’s very well known as a researcher and whatnot. And in the past, people, he said, people would always ask me, “Hey, where should I put my money, what do I do with it?” And he would always tell them, “Just put it in an index fund. Just buy an index fund, put it away and there you go. You don’t have to do anything else.” But they kept asking him, is that really the best way and what if I buy some newer companies instead, instead of the old boring companies that are in the [crosstalk 00:37:50].
So they did a lot of research and I’m not going to ruin it for everybody but they came out and they said that the old boring companies that you buy and you hold onto, you will actually outperform when you buy the new companies. So having the Exxon Mobile, will outperform having the Google or the Facebook over the long term. And there are a couple of reasons for that, one is obviously they pay a dividend. Secondly, it’s a stronger company because they pay a dividend. And also there’s something with the expected return of the stock. So the everyday investor, they think that Google and Facebook are going to make a lot of money, and so they’re expected to make a lot of money and so the stock is actually overpriced most of the time compared to other companies like an Exxon Mobile where the stock is not overpriced because nobody expects it to grow that much. There’s no growth premium to the stock. And so when you re buy more shares, you can actually get them much cheaper on an Exxon Mobile then a Facebook or Google. And so that was one of the ways that they said that a boring portfolio with boring companies will outperform a portfolio of all brand new high flying companies all the time.
Michael: Yeah, and they’re a lot easier to analyze as well because when you’re buying Facebook, you’re buying hope that Facebook is going to do well. When you’re buying Exxon Mobile, well you look at their cash flow, you look at their dividend, and if they have enough cash flow to pay their dividends, well you know what to expect. And if you go through the internet and do some research, you’ll find pretty much a bunch of academic studies showing you that more than half of the SMB 500 total return is coming from dividend payments. So again, yes, you will always have the chance of getting a Facebook once in a while, but for all the Facebooks, there are a lot of [inaudible 00:40:00] as well around. So you might as well build a strong dividend [inaudible 00:40:06] portfolio, and get like fifty or fifty five percent of your return will be actually the dividend that is being paid.
Allen: Right, so then let me ask you. So should I put my money in a whole bunch of different dividend stocks, or should I put it in something like SPY, which is the ETF for the SMB 500 which also pays a dividend?
Michael: There are two things about that. It depends on your level of knowledge, interest towards managing your portfolio and time that you can allow to it. I always compare investment to when I go see a mechanic for my oil change. It’s pretty easy to change the oil on a car. If you have a friend that is a mechanic, he’s going to tell you, “Allen, you’re stupid to pay eighty bucks for an oil change, you can just spend twenty minutes and do it yourself.” The thing is if you have no interest and no knowledge and no time to do it, you might as well pay someone else to do it for you. So for someone who’s building his portfolio for the first time and has little knowledge and little interest in spending time to build that portfolio, I think that dividend ETF, is a very good way to get [inaudible 00:41:20] diversification, a safer investment that if you try to pick one or two stocks and then stick to them.
But at the same time, the thing I dislike about ETF investing is that you are stuck with someone else’s strategy. When I look at the major holdings of most dividend ETF’s, there are companies in there that I don’t want in my portfolio, I don’t like them. They don’t meet my investing rules, they don’t meet my criteria. So I want to make sure that the company I pick, they are really solid and they’re not just made based on some kind of one trick pony rule, like companies that have been increasing their dividend for the past five years. Yes it’s a good starter but if you build your ETF around those kind of rules, you will obviously get some lemons in your basket. And picking each of them, you can avoid that.
Allen: Wow, okay, that makes a lot of sense. I never thought of that.
Michael: But then again if you’re starting, I think it’s a good thing to pick [inaudible 00:42:34], you get instant diversification, you get a bunch of companies at the same time, and you may spend a few hours to understand how ETF works at first, but once you buy it, it’s just there, and then it stay there and you don’t have to do much about it.
Allen: Right.
Michael: So those are the good points. On the other way, we’ve bene monitoring two ETF, one Canadian and one US at Dividend Stocks Rock and compare our portfolio models, and since 2013, eighty percent of our portfolio beat the ETF.
Allen: Wow.
Michael: And the only reason why we’re able to beat the ETF is quite simple, it’s because we handpick each of them. We don’t follow metric rules. Because metric rules are great, as a rule of thumb they’re great to build a strainer, just a stock list where you can take stocks from, but it’s not because the company needs revenue growth and an EPS growth, and dividend growth metrics over the past five or ten years, that they are automatically going to be a good pick in the future.
Allen: Ah, I see.
Michael: The business evolves fast, the environment evolves fast. For example, a company that I don’t like right now is Target because I think they’re going to lose in the online playground. I think that Amazon and even Walmart is going to be a strong number two, but it will leave little place to Target. I would not have this investment thesis ten, fifteen years. I would have told you Allen, Target is a great business. They are all across the US, they have a strong brand model, everybody wants to go to Target and they are growing, they are even expanding to Canada. And then a few years later, that was a big bust, they closed all their stores over here and now they’re struggling to find growth and they’re going online and saying, oh we post twenty percent digital sales growth but the overall revenue growth of all our businesses put together is like one percent. So in other words, people stop going to my mall, and instead they’re just ordering my stuff online, but that doesn’t make myself more profit. It’s just showing the world that my brick and mortar model is obsolete. But fifteen years ago, that wasn’t the case. Amazon was just selling books, now they’re selling [inaudible 00:45:02] everything.
Allen: Yeah, now they’re more like eBay.
Michael: Yeah.
Allen: They sell the stuff, but now they’re making more and more money from other people selling, using their platform.
Michael: Yeah, that has been a game changer I think for them. And there’s a lot of online marketer now that are making lots of money advertising it.
Allen: Definitely. Okay, all right, I get that. So now, one of the things that we promote, because we’re obviously … this is the option [inaudible 00:45:31] podcast so we’re all about options here, and I think that one of the things when you’re looking for trades, a lot of people what they do is when they’re looking for an options trade, whether they’re doing a covered call or a naked put a credit spread or whatever they’re doing, they will look for stocks that will have high volatility, they will look for stocks that are in the news, and then those are the ones that they place the trades on. One of the things that we teach everybody is that’s the wrong way to do it. The right way is to have your own watch list, your own list of stocks that you focus on, that you pay attention to, that you know about, so that way when the stock starts behaving in a way that it’s not normal, you will be able to pick up on that and so you don’t lose your shirt because most of the trades that I have done where I had lost a lot of money was on stocks that I had no business being in because I didn’t know anything about the company.
One of the ones I still remember is Las Vegas Sands which was [inaudible 00:46:37] LVS which is a Casino, which is now their worldwide, but I did covered calls on those, and I was able to make … or I should have been able to make roughly about, I think it was twelve percent in a month, which is an amazing return for a covered call. What I didn’t know at the time was that the company was facing bankruptcy and they could have gone under, and so the stock was at seventeen when I bought it, went down to about a dollar. And that was because I didn’t know the company, I didn’t research it, I didn’t do anything. So one of the ways that … for those of you who are listening, I love the fact that Mike said that they have their own portfolio, I think that is what everybody should have, of stocks, or at least a watch list and say, these are the ones that I want to trade instead of going off and searching for the newest IPO because it’s volatile.
So my Michael, one more question for you. We talked about this a little bit when you were at the house. Why are you not trading options?
Michael: The main reason why I haven’t been trading options is that for me, I don’t know. I always found it a little bit more complicated, and I didn’t want to put too much time into another strategy that I don’t control. I think that when you’re investing your own money, the most important thing is to understand what you’re doing and to feel comfortable with it. And I had enough time, put enough priority on it actually because I hate seeing that I didn’t have time. I didn’t take the time to learn more about options and how to make it successful. Because I know there’s a lot of … even a lot of my clients are using covered calls to increase their monthly revenue, and I understand the whole strategy behind options, I think it’s good. It’s just that in the real world, in real trades, I never just take the time to actually do it.
Allen: Okay, well so I would say that if those of you who are listening, if you need a … you need to know what companies to invest in, then definitely Mike’s website is one of the best places to get that information. I mean, yeah, like you said, you could go around and watch Jim Kramer at night, or go around to all these different magazines and websites and money.com and forbes.com and they’ll give you all those analyst stuff, but you can’t argue with beating … what was it, you beat the market with 80% of your portfolios?
Michael: Yeah, that’s correct. So we have portfolio models and we track a return against the VIG, and the [XDV 00:49:31] so it’s Canadian and US dividend paying ETF, and 80% of our portfolios are beating our benchmark.
Allen: So basically all I need to do is if I need … let’s say I need ten different companies, I want to own ten different companies, then I can just go to your website and get a list?
Michael: Yep. We also have … because the thing with the portfolio models is sometimes you pick up a stock, three or four years ago that was very, very interesting back then, and today is just a good [inaudible 00:50:05] but not necessarily the best time to invest in it.
Allen: Right.
Michael: So we do have portfolio models, but we also have stock reports and a ranking to show … and the ranking is being updated on a weekly basis to show which companies that we follow, so we actually do the same method that you suggest. We have a list of stocks that we follow on the weekly basis, and then depending on what happens in the stock market, then we adjust the ranking and say okay, well those top ten, those top fifteen are currently undervalued according to our system. We use the dividend discount model. So we do all of our evaluation calculation, and then we say those top ten, those top fifteen, they’re undervalued, so if you’re looking for an entry point, here’s your chance.
Allen: Okay sweet, cool. So basically we can go to your site, get a list, what’s under valued, get a list of what’s growing dividends because that’s a big part of it right? Those are the best ones, where they’re actually growing their dividend, and once we have that list, then we can just watch them and then we can do our option trades on those stocks, it’s a pretty simple model.
Michael: It is. The old purpose is to save time so you can enjoy time with your family doing your hobbies and still making money.
Allen: Right, yeah, so the course that I’m working on right now, we’re calling it the passive trading formula because we don’t want to be spending more than maybe two, three hours a month on our trades. And I think dividend stocks is a huge component of that. It’s one of the … I think it’s definitely a strategy that everybody should be having and I don’t know for some reason it seems to have fallen out of favor. Like before it was everybody and their mother wanted to have dividend stocks, but I don’t know when they went out of favor a little bit and it was just more of, yeah, let’s go for tech stocks. But I know that every smart investor that I talk to, they come back to the same thing. They come back to, yeah, I have good strong reliable companies in my portfolio and the best way to know if a company is strong and reliable is if they’re paying a dividend and if they’re growing the dividend. So it’s just coming back full circle.
Michael: Yeah, for sure. And you know what, I think that a lot of techno stocks will do the old techno’s. I don’t know if you remember but a while ago when Bill gates was CEO of Microsoft, he was saying that Microsoft would never pay dividends, and now they’re on their way to become the dividend achiever.
Allen: Right. Yep.
Michael: So even the old techno’s are becoming more reliable, and now they’re offering a steady trend. And obviously, they’re not growing that fast anymore but they’re rewarding their shareholders and it’s easier [inaudible 00:53:07] now.
Allen: Definitely. So Mike, where can we find out more about you and your stock portfolios?
Michael: You can head to DividendStocksRock.com and as we have discussed, I have an offer to all the listener to the podcast and everybody that comes from Option Genius, so you can go to DividendStocksRock.com/optiongenius, we’ll have the link as well during the podcast, and we’ll be giving you a 45% discount for the one year membership. So instead of paying $177 a year, you’ll be paying only $97 a year, and this price will never go up. And our goal at Dividend Stocks Rock is to have people that makes money with our website, so it’s not just to take their money and run. So we offer a sixty day trial period, so meaning that you enter, you pay, and then you have sixty days to decide if DSR works for you or not, and then just a quick email we will do the full refund if there is any problem. And so far we haven’t received much emails.
Allen: I can imagine. Yeah, no I’m also a member, and I do get a lot of great value out of it, so I urge … if you’re looking for a good watch list, if you’re looking for good stable stocks and you don’t want to spend the hours and hours trying to go through and pick the best ones then it’s best to just get it done for you right?
Michael: Yeah, we do all the work so all you have to do is to take a few minutes, read our reports and then you can do your trades.
Allen: Yeah, and that’s a hundred dollars a year, it doesn’t even cost a lot. What is your time worth? You can easily spend hours and hours looking at your stocks and then updating them and staying on top of them, or you can just log onto this website once a month and see if anything changes, right?
Michael: That’s correct.
Allen: It’s a no brainer. All right, Mike, well I appreciate your time, I appreciate you coming and talking to us, sharing some of your knowledge, and I wish you all the well on your future trips.
Michael: Thank you Allen, there’s been quite a lot of times and I’ll take a look at Option Genius at one point in time as well.
Allen: Okay, all right my friend.
Michael: Take care.
Allen: Take care.
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