Dividends: Expert Guides and Resources

Dividend investing is nothing new. However, following a dividend-investment strategy is new to many modern investors who've been focused solely on growth investing. If you count yourself among this crowd or are just starting out and plan on investing in dividend stocks, you need to know how to develop your strategy, find and evaluate potentially good dividend stocks, manage your portfolio, and avoid the most common and critical mistakes.

Some people are better at bargain hunting than others. What usually separates the clueless from the pros is that the pros know what something is worth. The same is true for finding bargains on Wall Street. You need to know what a stock is worth, and low price isn’t always a bargain.Value investors hunt for bargains, but they buy only after performing some careful research and crunching the numbers.

Tools, data, and analysis previously accessible only to investment professionals are now readily available on the Web 24/7 and are better and faster than ever. Many Web sites even provide free stock screeners that enable you to search for stocks by price, dividend yield, price -to-earnings ratio (P/E), earnings per share (EPS), and more.

Dividend stock investing may seem daunting, but with a little knowledge of how to find and pick promising dividend-paying stocks, you can invest in these stocks and reap dividends like a pro. Your portfolio will thank you.Researching your dividend stock picks with important formulasAs with all stocks, you should research the dividend stocks you’re considering before you buy them to ensure they’re good investments.

If you are investing online and have a taxable brokerage account, you need to understand how dividends work. Remember that a dividend is a distribution of a portion of a company's earnings to some of its shareholders. Dividends can be issued as cash payments, stock shares, or even other property.Dividends are paid based on how many shares you own or dividends per share (DPS).

A balance sheet presents a financial snapshot of what the company owns and owes at a single point in time, typically at the end of each quarter. It’s essentially a net worth statement for a company. The left or top side of the balance sheet lists everything the company owns: its assets, also known as debits. The right or lower side lists the claims against the company, called liabilities or credits, and shareholder equity.

When you start shopping for dividend stocks and evaluating candidates, consider targeting a specific dividend category to narrow the field. After identifying a few prospects that meet your minimum dividend requirements, you can then dig deeper into each company by using valuation, growth, liquidity, and solvency ratios.

You can’t always control what happens around you, and this is true of investing in the stock market. Inflation can soar, the Federal Reserve can raise or lower interest rates, bubbles can burst, and entire economies can crumble. However, by becoming more aware of these risks, you can develop strategies for dealing with them effectively.

Several industrial sectors are filled with dividend-paying companies, and some sectors provide better bets than others for your dividend stock investment portfolio. The following sectors offer the top options for dividend stock investing; when you’re fishing for good dividend stocks, you can improve your chances of hooking some keepers by dropping your line in these holes: Utilities: Electricity, water, and natural gas (suppliers, not producers) Energy: Oil, natural gas (producers, not suppliers), and master limited partnerships (MLPs) Telecommunications: Carriers (U.