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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ron Bower who wrote (4657)	8/16/1998 12:31:00 AM
From: Paul Senior	Respond to of 78628

Hi Ron: re trend in dividends. It's possible with changes in perception, aging of investors, and changing tax laws, that there will be a trend to focus on dividends - the yield number and/or the increasing $/sh amounts. But who knows? Phil Fisher said, forget dividends... if you need money, just sell some shares. Which is easy and cost-effective enough to do now IMO. But Ibbotson says that a heck of a lot of the return that common stocks have provided over long periods of time (like I recall maybe 60% of the 10%??) are provided by dividends. My general take on dividends and companies is this: Once a company commits to its dividend policy... it must and should stick to this policy. Otherwise, it is sending a definite signal -- like sell - to investors. That is, I can be comfortable with a company that has a policy of no dividends, or a policy of a constant dividend amount, or a company that occasionally and sporadically increases its dividends, or a company that increases dividends every year. But not a company that changes such a policy. Paul

To: Ron Bower who wrote (4657)	8/16/1998 6:24:00 PM
From: Bob Rudd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78628

Dividend trends: From a rational perspective dividends are a poor way to deliver value to shareholders: They aren't deductible to the corporation and they're taxed as ordinary income to the recipient. There's been a growing awareness and trend away from dividends to share buybacks as a result. Nevertheless you see discounted closed end funds like GHS trying to narrow the discount by setting up a 10% discount policy so rational or not dividends are seen as important by some. Just my .02 Bob