Special Interview With Simeon Hyman - Global Investment Strategist at ProShares

In this month’s special episode, Greg interviews Simeon Hyman, the Global Investment Strategist and Head of Investment Strategy at ProShares. 

With over $60 billion in managed assets across more than 100 different ETFs and funds, ProShares is a large-scale player in the financial markets. Their second-largest fund, The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Fund (Ticker: NOBL), is a testament to the power of dividend growth and showcases just how effective compounding returns over time is. 

During the interview, Greg picks Simeon’s brain about dividend growth investing and how NOBL executes this strategy extremely well. Later, Greg and Simeon dispel some misconceptions some investors may have.

As June marks the 12th monthly episode of TDM, a full year of growing dividend checks is in the rear-view mirror. Considering everything we’ve covered so far, we hope you enjoy this special interview! 

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Resources:

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📊 Getting into the weeds: DCM Investment Reports & Models 

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Disclaimer: Past performance does not guarantee future results. Every investor should consider whether an investment strategy is right for them and all the risks involved. Stocks, including dividend stocks, are volatile and can lose money. Denewiler Capital Management may or may not have positions in the publicly traded companies mentioned herein.

Transcript

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Greg  0:11  

This is Greg Denewiler, and you're listening to another episode of The Dividend Mailbox, a podcast about dividend growth. Our goal is to stuff your mailbox full of dividend checks and make each year's check larger than the last.

Greg  0:38  

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to The Dividend Mailbox. Today we have a special episode. We have our first official guest who is well versed in the dividend growth strategy. I hope listening to this will give you a little bit better idea of why dividends are so important. So without further ado, our guest today is Simeon Hyman. He is currently the chief global strategist at ProShares. In the past, he's been the Chief Investment Officer for Bloomberg Wealth and also head of investment strategy at UBS. If you aren't familiar with ProShares, they are one of the larger ETF firms, with over $60 billion of managed assets. They have over 100 active funds in the marketplace, each having a unique investment strategy. Of course, one of their largest ones, actually their second-largest ETF, is the Dividend Aristocrat Fund, which is a great example of just how powerful the dividend growth strategy can be. Here at Denewiler Capital Management, you know we love dividend growth. We use the Dividend Aristocrat Fund as part of the core foundation of our dividend growth strategy. If you've listened to our previous podcasts, in one of them we talked about how in the last 50 years, ending in 2019, of the 25 best-performing stocks, 24 of them paid dividends. So all but the top number one performing stock, (which is Berkshire Hathaway), they all pay dividends, Berkshire Hathaway does not. So I think this is a good segue into the Dividend Aristocrat Fund because several of those names are part of that fund. So Simeon, why don't you tell us about the Dividend Aristocrat Fund.

Simeon  2:31  

Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. Indeed, ticker NOBL- noble, is one of our largest ETFs and it's a dividend growth ETF. It tracks the S&P 500 dividend aristocrat index. Those are companies that have grown their dividends for a minimum of 25 straight years. It's that consistency that's really important because I like to think of the strategy as an elegant one. And why do I say elegant? Well, I wouldn't want to say it's simple because it captures a lot and yet, you can explain it very succinctly. So there's only one rule, all you got to do- Well, there's two rules, you have to be in the S&P 500, you have to grow your dividend 25 straight years. So that makes it simple, but it's elegant because it captures all this important stuff. As Greg was indicating it's such a mark of quality, there is no way you can fake a dividend. So to be able to increase it for 25 straight years at a minimum means that you're growing earnings, you're growing your cash flow, your balance sheet is in good shape, you're not over-leveraged. So all these things that, sure, you could try to do it by pulling your green eyeshades on and ripping apart balance sheets and doing all this kind of work. Yet the truth is you don't have to. A simple and elegant rule really captures all of that and it does it in a disciplined way. So we just follow- NOBL just follows the index. There's no waking up in the morning and tossing one stock in and one stock out. It's a real discipline. The strategy can't change its stripes, so you always know what you're getting. That combination really, not to be cute about it, pays dividends for for investors.

Greg  4:22  

I think the last part is really important; the way stocks are put into the portfolio and they're not traded in and out. Discipline is truly the key to success in a dividend growth strategy. Listeners of The Dividend Mailbox have heard the story about our model portfolio. And how the dividend income has grown from $600 to now, it's running at a run rate of about $1,700 over the space of about a decade. Where we've had consistent dividend growth and it has come from discipline of just having stuck stocks in the portfolio and letting them compound. Another thing that I would like to mention, I do own, personally, NOBL and I bought it originally in February of 2016. I paid 40- a little over $47 a share for it. Over the next six years, I've received $9 of dividends. The original dividend yield was 2.4% when I bought it, and today, its projected dividend yield is to be about 2.4% for this year. But since I own it at a price that's basically half of where it is now, my dividend yield is now up to 5.7%. That is the whole point of why you want to be patient with these dividend payers. Part of the success that we have experienced, especially with our model portfolios, we've held some of these positions for 10 years or more. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on compounding and how it is affected NOBL.

Simeon  6:05  

It's really, really important. First, let me start with the recent experience because before we even get to the compounding, the growth of the dividends in challenging markets is super important. And it's important even just to keep you in your seat. You know, here's a couple of examples in 20- Last year, NOBL grew its dividend 10%. And in 2020, the depth of the pandemic, the dividends grew 14%. So even in that just couple of year period, it's super comforting to be able to look at your statement and see that well, I'm getting double-digit dividend growth. So I can kind of ignore the, you know, the stuff on CNBC and weather this storm appropriately. But to your point of the long term, the S&P 500- look, dividends are important to the S&P 500 off the shelf. We exchanged some emails on this, the S&P 500 has grown its dividend, over the long run, about 6%. NOBL has grown its dividend, over the long term, about 9%. It's a big difference. And it does compound too. You use this term- It's not a term that's in the sort of finance textbooks- this notion of yield on cost. But it's a real one. When your yield is becoming a really nice chunky piece of that initial investment, it can really help you from cash flow spending purposes, retirement planning, there's so many benefits to it. And it adds up over time. And one of the ways that it adds up over time is I like to think of it as having your cake and eat it too. Particularly an environment like this, you will sometimes see advisors and investors stretch for yield. They'll look for a stock that today is generating a 4, 5, 6, 7% yield. The problem there is if the yield is that high, it's often because the company may be nearing some some stressful periods. Also, if the yields that high, it can be susceptible, just like a bond to rising interest rates. The beauty of dividend growth is you're not stretching for that yield. So you know today the yield on on NOBL is just a little bit higher than the S&P 500. But because the growth of those dividends is notably in excess of the broad market, just a couple of years down the road, you have that high dividend on your cost basis. But you didn't stretch to get there. You got there with high quality and growth dividends. And that's a super important distinction as well.

Greg  8:48  

Well, there's definitely a distinction between dividend growth and high dividends, which if you've listened to any of our podcasts, you know that we're huge proponents of dividend growth. As we went back and started building our dividend growth story, one of the things that we noticed is that for the last 70 years+, GDP has grown by about 5.5% a year- between 5 and 6% a year when you add in inflation. But then what I think a lot of investors may not realize is that when you look at earnings growth, it's been pretty close to the same growth rate, and that's around 6% a year. But then there's one further component to this thesis, and it's the dividend growth line of the S&P 500. And it too has grown by 6% a year. Of course, the most smooth line of the three is GDP growth. It just doesn't- there's not that much volatility to it even in in years of recession. The earnings line is much more volatile. But inbetween is the dividend line and that one is much more stable. And that last line, the S&P 500 dividend is what we like to refer to as "the line". So what we tried to do was, we looked at that and said, "All right, what we want to do, we just try to get on the line and stay on the line and be on that 6% growth." That's where we put all of our emphasis. And that's where we try to build the core of our firm. When you look at it, and when you break it up into decades, for the last 70 years, and you look at each decade, it really doesn't matter whether the dividend for the S&P starts at 1.5%, whether it's at 6%, I think one of the top decades was 8%. But what was consistent regardless of where the dividend yield is, dividends grow at about 6% a year. So since the Dividend Aristocrat Fund (NOBL) does a great job of getting you on the line because all the companies in it have grown their dividends by at least 25 years. One of the problems recently has been that since it has a 25 year minimum time horizon, virtually none of the tech companies have paid dividends that long. Most of them are- some of them started in the early 2000s or more recently, so that leaves us with a little bit of a void. Microsoft, Apple, some of these just you know, phenomenal growth stories, big tech names that now are dividend payers, they're not in the Dividend Aristocrat Fund. But even there, the Dividend Aristocrat Fund has not lagged by that much. But Simeon, I know at ProShares, you even have a solution for that space where you can actually own some of the tech companies that are paying good dividends. 

Simeon  11:58  

Absolutely. So as a footnote, NOBL's outperformance in the first half of this year has made up for just about all of that underperformance during the rip-roaring tech for the last couple of years. So I'll just park that on the side for a minute. But tech is super important. And notwithstanding where your view is on technology valuations, one thing that has very quietly happened is that technology stocks started paying dividends. In fact, today, the technology sector is the largest contributor of dividends to the S&P 500, and we thought it was important to offer the opportunity without diluting NOBL's 25 year rule. S&P put together a separate index called the Technology Dividend Aristocrats to capture this growing group of technology companies that are growing their dividends. And why is that so important? In addition to everything we've said about dividend growth, I'll give you one more little vignette or story here. And that is the importance of dividend growth and how it's different from a buyback. When people talk about the technology sector, pretty soon you're gonna get to a discussion about buybacks because the tech sector is so well known for buying back stock. Here's the difference: when a company buys back its stock, it's telling you the good times were yesterday. "We had a good year, we got some extra cash, let's buy back some stock." When it increases its dividend, it's telling you the good times are coming, because no company ever wants to cut a dividend. Is a buyback better than wasting money? Absolutely. But it's not quite the bullish signal that a dividend increase tells you about the prospects for a company. That's really important, so we did launch ticker TDV. I guess it's Tom, David, Victor. I don't know if that's official military code, but TDV to capture and allow the ability to add a technology sleeve but still focused on dividend growth, delivering all the the attributes that we discussed.

Greg  14:19  

Well, we haven't used too much tech in our portfolios, partly because it's just a very evolving space. We don't feel comfortable with how fast some of the transition occurs in this space. But I think TDV is a great way to get exposure to tech and still stay on the dividend theme. And it's a great way to diversify your portfolio and get more exposure to that sector if you want it. I do have to say that I do own Microsoft and it's in several client accounts. Personally I've owned it for more than a decade and originally it was a 3% dividend payer. It was back when Steve Ballmer was the CEO. The company was struggling to grow and it was actually underperforming the S&P 500 for a few years. I think it's just another example that you don't have to give up growth to still own a dividend. We really want to try to get a minimum of 6% a year of dividend growth, that's going to help give you a good total return. That is one of the things that's part of the NOBL story. And kind of in that light, Berkshire Hathaway, which was one of the top performers in the last 50 years- Warren Buffett, has openly admitted and is almost proud of the fact that he doesn't pay a dividend. But when you look at his portfolio, virtually every one of his holdings pays a dividend. He doesn't like to pay a dividend, but he sure does like to receive them. So do you feel paying or not paying a dividend has any major effect on total return? 

Simeon  16:08  

The dividends have a point. They have a critical signaling aspect. And look, if you're Warren Buffett, you've had no problem signaling to the market your discipline, your intent, and your strategy. But for most companies, dividends have a really important role in communicating, again, those future prospects and as well as their commitment to maximizing shareholder value- not to be jargony about it. But think about it this way. Prior to 2004, dividends were taxed at the marginal tax rate, and the sale of the stock was taxed at capital gains over the long or short term. So if you go back prior to 2004, a dividend was actually a bad tax deal. And yet they existed and were critically important to total return. If the dividend was so important, when it was tax disadvantaged, you have to acknowledge that it's a critical signal for corporate health to the marketplace. Fortunately, you don't have to make that Fustian bargain anymore because qualified dividends are taxed at capital gains rate. So there is no tax disadvantage anymore. But I go back into history to say, "Wow, even in an environment where they were a bad tax deal, they were still really important." They got to have a lot of information value. Warren Buffett doesn't need it, but most companies do.

Greg  17:45  

Well, I definitely agree that dividends send a signal because that's part of the basis of our strategy. These companies, they make a commitment, and they're making a commitment to shareholders that they'll continue to deliver on in the future. And Warren Buffett's, really, commitment not to pay a dividend. I don't think investors should read too much into that. If you actually look at his portfolio, clearly, he does like them. He just makes a choice not to pay a dividend himself because he's confident that he can reinvest the proceeds, which he has done a good job over the life of Berkshire Hathaway, you can't argue about that. Dividends do give you a lot of flexibility, you can live off of them, you can reinvest them, you can let the cash build, it allows you to buy another equity position without having to sell anything. I think, you know, dividends are just a good way to help you stay disciplined in your portfolio. Dividend investing has been such an important part of the markets returned for the last, basically the last 100 years or more. But some investors apparently fail to see that. Last week I listened to a podcast and the title of it was "The Case Against Dividend Investing." It really kind of caught me off guard. So I thought it'd be kind of fun to just do a little rebuttal here and get your response to some of these questions. So to start with, one of the points that they tried to make was that if you just focus on dividend investing, that you only get exposed to one portion of the market

Simeon  19:36  

As we discussed this a little bit previously, but if you look at NOBL, with the exception of the underweight in technology, you are well represented across just about every sector and I'll give you an example of a sector that might might surprise you. You may recall that, in the in the depths of the financial crisis, that all the banks, actually they either cut their dividends willingly or they were forced with with some government intervention that cut their dividends. So it's 25 year rule for inclusion in the aristocrats and the NOBL ETF. So there you go, the big banks are gone, and they accepted their dividends again, five or six years ago, but they'll be gone for 20 years. And so you say to yourself, "Man, is that fair?" Should I you know, water down the rules and make an exception? Well, you know, what, if you look at NOBL it's sector allocation to Financials is, it's I think it's a smidgen underweight the index, the s&p 500, but not much. But you know, what's in there, insurance companies and asset managers. So, you know, let me take the guys that have tended to be a little more stable, stable over time, I'm gonna take that trade. So, it again, with the exception of technology, you really have a pretty good cross section of the entire market. And not only that, you're not really tilted one way or the other. It's not these aren't, quote, unquote, "deep value stocks," nor are they hyper growth stocks in the, in the quote unquote, "style box," they're right in the middle. So it really does tend to be a very good core holding, where you're really not missing out on anything.

Greg  21:21  

I would just make a couple of comments. Number one, everything in your portfolio doesn't have to be a 25 year dividend growth story. The second point is, out of the S&P 500. Last I checked, 395 of them pay dividends. So I'm just not quite sure where you're missing out on anything. But the next point that they made, it's actually has, I think, some validity to it. What they imply is that if a company pays a dividend, they don't have a compelling growth strategy, or they don't have good alternatives to reinvest their capital. Your thoughts on that?

Simeon  22:07  

Yeah, that's that's one of those odd canards. Let's, break this into a couple of pieces. First, the evidence that they're growing quite well, is that dividend growth rate in and of itself. So there's no way to generate 9% year over year over year dividend growth without growing the company, at least that much. Yeah, one year here and there, can you borrow a little money to prop it up? I suppose, but not 25 years in a row. And that's one of the reasons for the long track record. So the fact that those dividends are growing so robustly, you know, really flies in the face of the notion that these aren't growth opportunities. Again, it goes back to the key distinction between dividend growth and high dividend yield. But what also was important is where it goes back to your discipline point. It has been a good strategy to invest in companies that do have a little extra discipline because you don't want the money squandered. By first principles, companies should not invest in projects that return less than the cost of capital. And if they're not growing that dividend, it's a little easier to get a little sloppy to buy a few extra jets maybe make an acquisition that doesn't make much sense. And so the dividend itself was important discipline. So the consistent and high growth of the dividends flies in the face of the argument. But yes, I would suggest that the trade of a little discipline on that capital expenditure and acquisition opportunities is certainly well worthwhile.

Greg  23:53  

I can't add too much to that, because that's our whole thesis. Discipline is just such a big part of the of the dividend story, and how companies allocate their capital. And the only one point I guess I would make is that companies that do go out and acquire, study after study shows that they tend to destroy value. Very few times do they actually increase shareholder value. Another point they make, which I think was really misleading, is that companies that pay dividends are too big, they're too mature, and it's unreasonable to expect to grow revenue at 10% a year because their balance sheet is just too big. Do you think that's valid?

Simeon  24:37  

Yeah, also weird one and it is pretty much the same observation as the as the previous one, but you just gotta keep pointing to that 9% long run increase in dividends for the aristocrat index and for NOBL. To have it be clear that you know that the opportunity to grow even for larger companies is a rather solid one. It's like that old valuation exercise you do in business school, you are supposed to pretend that at the end of some finite time horizon that a company cannot grow fast enough to increase its value. And you can never get your valuation exercise to look right. Because even a big company- Procter Gamble, Coca Cola, Clorox- any of these dividend aristocrats you can't pretend they're going to stop growing in 10 years, nothing makes sense at that point. And the truth is that, you know, every time the end of that 10 years comes, we're still standing at the beginning of another 10 years. So there's so much evidence of good quality companies growing for decades, upon decades upon decades. Does that mean you don't want any smaller high growth opportunities in your portfolio, you know, in in modest amounts in an appropriate asset allocation? No, but a core of large cap companies that grow their dividends are very likely to continue to grow, and grow meaningfully enough to be the quintessential inflation and rising interest rate hedge as well.

Greg  26:12  

And I would bring up the fact that, you know, we've started following a company Williams and Sonoma. It's got a 3% dividend right now, it's a small company, there's a lot of room to grow there, and the dividend has been a growth story. In the last 22 years, its total return is 680% versus the S&P that's had 320% of total return growth. And I think it's just another example of great growth out of dividend growth. So, you know, I guess it's all in your perspective. Another thing I think you have to remember, is there an agenda behind what somebody is trying to tell you? They would keep coming back to AT&T and how, here's a company that's paid a big dividend, but it really hasn't, you know, the total return hasn't been there. My reaction to that is AT&T is just one of hundreds in the total marketplace- 1000s of dividend stocks. I noticed that they didn't pick Microsoft, Accenture, Lockheed Martin. I mean, there's just a whole list of big companies that have great total returns, and they still pay a dividend. The last point I'll make from from the "don't invest in dividends story"- they made the comment that if you're total return focused, which inccidentally I think every investor should be, that theoretically to minimize your tax liability, you shouldn't want dividends, and that you should make your own if you need a dividend by just selling a portion of one of your positions.

Simeon  27:55  

This one's right out of Nobel Prize winning finance. So in the theoretical world, you can't argue with that. You know, the the notion of dividend equivalence of making your own dividend- Yes, as a conceptual matter, I could have a pile of non dividend paying stocks, and hopefully they do really well. And I could just sell three, four or 5% of them every year to satisfy my obligations and pay capital gains tax. So the first issue, the first challenge to that is, number one, you're not tax disadvantaged really anymore now that the dividend tax rate has been reduced to the capital gains rate back in 2004. The second point is that we just don't live in the theoretical world and it comes back to that signaling aspect. It's almost like a little bit of earnings surprise. Every time a company increases its dividend. It's telling you that its prospects are just a little bit better than you thought the day before. And you know, imagine being able to predict companies that would surprise to the upside their earnings every year. If you had a crystal ball, you'd love to invest in a strategy like that. Unfortunately, we don't have crystal balls. But one of the closest things we have are companies that consistently grow their dividends for a long period of time, and that overtime has delivered. And this is really important, not just those nice growing dividends, dividends that are growing in excess of the S&P 500. But yes, over the long term, even higher total returns than the S&P 500. So you're really not giving anything up. So you can't argue with Nobel Prize winning theory that says it shouldn't matter. But in practical terms, it does and if you read some of the research over the last 20 and 30 years, (because the point that's being observed is one that was hatched in the 1950s), but if you read some of the more recent economic literature on the signaling effect, and also this notion of the pecking order theory of finance, those point to the real importance and where some of that outperformance dividend growers comes from in the real world.

Greg  29:49  

We're both CFA's, so we're taught that it really shouldn't matter whether a company pays out 10%, 20%, 40% of their capital in a dividend, the total return to the shareholder is theoretically supposed to be about the same. But personally, I just think it gives you a little bit more confidence. It gives you a little bit more discipline and staying power, if you're watching those dividend checks, hit your account every quarter, or in some cases monthly because of some ETFs. But the bottom line is receiving cash usually is a good thing. So we've talked about "the line", the S&P 500's dividend growth. One more question I'll ask you. Everyone should be waiting for the answer for this, although if you're not, you probably don't understand the power of compounding. The big question is, with everything that's going on, and there's always something that investors worry about, it's just kind of the nature of the business do you think dividends can grow by at least 6%? Over the next decade?

Simeon  30:58  

Oh, absolutely. I mean, again, the long run track record is 9% for the aristocrats, but as importantly, 10% last year, and 14% and 2020. So you know, I think the the, if history is any guide, and you know, history doesn't repeat, it rhymes, all that sort of stuff. But it's a pretty reasonable, reasonable presumption. And particularly, as we're looking at an environment that maybe for the next decade, hopefully we won't have elevated inflation. But if inflation stays a little bit high for a little while, there is almost no better bulwark against inflation than those growing dividends. And just in case things get a little rocky, if you go if you look at the dividends as a proportion of your total return on equities, if you look at it by decade, and it's been really important, I think it's around 35% of market returns over the long term. So it's a really important ingredient, not just again, not just for consumption, and going into grocery purposes, but also for total return. But if you look at challenging markets, it's even more important. People talk about the 1970s as a lost decade, it actually wasn't. Stocks weren't that bad. But three quarters of the return from stocks in the 70s came from dividends. So they're yet even more important when there's a little extra inflation and a little bit of choppiness to the equity markets.

Greg  32:29  

It is a 100 year old story, and I don't think it's changing anytime soon. And I think one of the problems is there's so much media attention on growth, that the dividend story just gets lost, even though it is basically the foundation of the market. And I'll just add that the dividend payout ratio currently of the S&P 500 is around 30% now. And that is near, it's historic low. So even in the next decade, if earnings are somewhat stagnant, or they don't grow at the, at their normal rate of around 6% a year, even if they're half of that, and the payout ratio just goes back to its norm of up around 45%, that gives you a margin of error, and still lets you get close to your 6% dividend growth. I do think, you know, investors tend to get too focused on quarter-to-quarter, year-to-year earnings growth. But if you take a step back, and you just look at GDP, earnings are correlated to GDP. Well, GDP grows virtually every year. And it's done that for for a century. So it gives you some indication that we're also going to have dividend growth. The great thing about the market is they love to speculate on pretty much everything. And there's a futures market for dividends. They've isolated just the dividend rate for the next decade for the S&P 500. Currently, the dividend rate on the S&P 500 for this year is at a run rate of around $65. And if you look into the to the futures market, they are projecting that in 2031, the S&P 500 dividend is going to be at $66, which is barely up from its current rate. Well, I think listeners should know that don't put too much emphasis on this because it's a very, it's a speculative market. It's just a way to trade, and I would personally wouldn't read a whole lot into it. But it is just just interesting to see, you know what the markets are predicting day-to-day. Well, I know we've covered a lot. We've hit the dividend topic relatively hard here. Anything else that you would like to add?

Simeon  35:06  

I think we've hit this one in a lots a lots of different ways. The last point is a very interesting one. There are some some hedge fund characters and folks that that do, you know, look and invest in the futures market for dividends. You can actually strip the dividends from stocks and create sort of a fixed income looking stream. I wouldn't suggest that, for most people, that's the way to go. It takes a lot of work to do that. For most of us, owning the stocks and clipping those dividends is the most straightforward way to go. But it's but it is a proof point, if you will, of how important the dividends are and how much more stable than price they are, that there are folks who do bend over backwards to to isolate them, if you will. It's a nice proof point.

Greg  36:01  

One of the phrases that we came up with was we call it the second decade effect. And basically, it's the concept that you need to focus on holding these things. In NOBL, The dividend aristocrats really define this concept. You need to hold them for more than a decade because that's where the compounding really kicks in, and that's where you really start to create wealth. But Simeon, I really appreciate your time today. I think the dividend story, it's just a great story to tell. You obviously know it, it's great that ProShares has an ETF that really focuses on the long term dividend growth story. I think one of the problems in the marketplace is they do everything they can- they bombard you every day with all the reasons why you shouldn't pay attention to these little dividends. And really, everything is against just letting these things compound over time. In the end, they're where wealth is created. Thanks again for your time.

Simeon  37:09  

Thanks for having me, really appreciate it.

Greg  37:12  

I hope you enjoy the interview I had with Simeon. Here's someone who has a major presence in the in the field of dividend investing, so I hope you got something out of it. And you may not realize that the ProShares Dividend Aristocrat Fund, as far as I'm aware, it's the only one that is an ETF that's tied specifically to the companies that have grown their dividends by 25 years. I also have to say that dividend growth, I mean it's simple to conceptualize and it's really simple to just go out and buy a dividend stock. But it's another thing to go after total return. You really have to pay attention to companies that have a discipline, that have a strategy that's sustainable, and it's sustainable over the next several decades or more. And as you soon start to realize, it's not a strategy that's simple to execute. So if you have any questions, any comments, feel free to email us, you know, give us a call and we'd be happy to talk about and help you in this area. And of course, it is what we do. We invest for long-term dividend growth. But in the meantime, join us next month as we continue to explore and go down this path that creates wealth.

Greg  38:46  

If you enjoyed today's podcast, please leave us a review and follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. If you would like more information regarding dividend growth or just our style of investing, go to growmydollar.com There you will find some of our previous podcasts and also our monthly newsletter. If you have any questions or anything to add regarding today's podcast, email ethan@growmydollar.com. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Each investor should consider whether a strategy is right for them and all the risk involved. Dividend Stocks are volatile and can lose money.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai