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

4In God We Trust,All Others Pay Cash

Throughout this work, and in The Strategic Dividend Investor, I have emphasized that investors should look through the stock market to see the underlying enterprises available for ownership there and take the view that they are not just holders of the stocks but owners of said businesses. To drive that point home, I have often referred to local or small companies—whose shares are unlikely to be traded on an exchange and who therefore are more likely to be viewed properly as businesses, not the playthings that stocks have become. On the other hand, I have been equally consistent in my criticism of the poor capital allocation in the “market,” defined as the S&P 500 Index of the largest corporations in the United ...