Dean Cross

Home The Investing Strategy Series

Pick Dividend Stocks That Keep Paying

The Yield Rules That Held Up, and the Ones That Quietly Failed — Tested on Every Stock in the S&P 500 Since 1990

Some dividend rules work. Some only sound like they do. This book tested them on every stock in the S&P 500 since 1990 — and shows you which is which.

For what dividend income actually paid through three decades of crashes, see Weathered, in the Retirement Income Series.

If you buy dividend stocks, you have been handed the rules:

  • Reach for the highest yield.
  • Trust a long streak of dividend raises.
  • Buy when a company raises its dividend.
  • Buy a stock when its yield looks high against its own past.
  • Buy the ten highest-yielding Dow stocks every January.

Each one sounds sensible, and each one comes with examples. Pick Dividend Stocks That Keep Paying does something different: it tests every rule on the whole record — three decades of S&P 500 stocks, including the companies that cut, collapsed, were bought out or stopped paying — and reports what actually happened next.

The answer is good news for a careful investor. A small set of rules held up clearly, and almost all of them are rules for keeping the dividends you buy. They are simple to apply, and the book shows you how, step by step.

Inside, you will learn:

  • Where the yield trap begins, and the line that keeps you out of it
  • Why the yield predicts the ride, not the return — and how to use that
  • How to tell a high yield that is normal for the company from one that is a warning
  • The one return edge that held up under nearly every check: companies early in a run of dividend raises
  • What a small raise, a freeze or a first dividend says about the years ahead
  • The warning signs that came before a cut, and the combination that was followed by a cut half the time
  • What really happens to a stock's price when the dividend is cut — and why the warning matters more than the announcement
  • Whether dividend capture works
  • A four-sign screen that cut the losses of the 2007–09 crash by nearly a third

Every chapter asks one question, answers it from the record, explains why the answer came out the way it did, and ends with what to do with it. Worked examples walk through each check step by step. Five questions at the end let you put the whole book to work on the stocks you own today.

Tested, not assumed. There are no ticker picks and no promised returns. Every number comes from a test described in the back of the book, and the full results are printed there for anyone who wants to check them.

Written for any investor who buys individual dividend stocks and wants income that keeps arriving. No background beyond the basics is needed.

The first book in The Investing Strategy Series, from the author of Built and Weathered — in the same plain voice, one tested rule at a time.

Pick the dividends that keep paying and leave the ones that are about to stop.

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