The Dividend Imperative: How Dividends Can Narrow the Gap between Main Street and Wall Street

1Stocks Go Up BecauseDividends Go Up

The fundamental principle which applies here is that the value of capital at any instant is derived from the value of the future income which that capital is expected to yield.

Irving Fisher, The Nature of Capital and Income, 1906¹

For an institution that is supposed to offer instant and correct valuations of businesses, the U.S. stock market does a stunningly poor job of it. So says a dividend investor. And so should say any rational observer watching the market rise a few percent one day and go down by the same amount the next. How is one to navigate such a landscape? In the spirit of offering investors something beyond Wall Street’s self-serving mantra of “buy low, sell high, and repeat frequently,” let’s ...