Your key to surviving market volatility is to make sure you have dividend paying stocks. With dividends youโ€™re a winner each and every year. As a dividend-centric investor your goal isn’t to sell stocks at a higher price. It is to hold onto stocks that pay you a rich dividend. As you can see in this chart, losing money can happen literally overnight. Most investors get out at the wrong timeโ€”on the way down. But when you invest for dividends youโ€™re not a seller or a buyerโ€”youโ€™re a collector. And collecting rare and hard to find dividends turns out to be quite fun.ย As you can see from the chart below, the high yielding S&P Dividend Aristocrats index outperformed the S&P 500 index by 8.2% from the end of 2005, through the Great Recession and until the present.

sandp aristocrats vs sandp 500

 

E.J. Smith works with new investors that have $2 million or more to invest. He can be reached at:ejsmith@youngresearch.com.