I have to let you in on a secret: I hate selling stocks.
I love researching them and buying them, but I simply cannot stand hemming and hawing over my portfolio each and every day, trying to decide what to swap out of my holdings. It takes up far too much time and — frankly — I have better things to do…
Like enjoy my life.
I’d much prefer to take my kids hiking, travel around Europe, or even have a couple of beers and heckle strangers at a baseball game. If I’m being totally honest, I would rather mow my lawn than agonize over whether or not to sell some whipsawing small-cap stock. In fact, there are so many things I’d rather do than watch the market that I have set up my portfolio to make sure I have enough free time to enjoy — and pay for — the sheer enjoyment of life itself.
That’s why I finance all of my fun and adventures with dividend-paying income stocks.
On one hand, I’m what some may call a lazy investor and being “lazy” has paid off for me time and time again. But I just found out about a fund that makes my lazy portfolio look downright aggressive. This fund has taken the buy-and-hold philosophy to the most extreme lengths I have ever seen.
This fund hasn’t bought a new stock in 80 years. You read that right — 80 years of holding the same basket of stocks.
And it is still crushing the market to this day…
The Voya Corporate Leaders Trust Fund has been riding the same basket of stocks since 1935!
It hasn’t bought a stock since the Dust Bowl, for crying out loud. To put that in perspective, Voya has not added a position to its portfolio since:
- The Hoover Dam was completed
- The Hindenburg went down in flames
- Elvis was born
- FDR was reelected
How’s that for patience? It figures that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and boy I’ll eat my hat if it’s not the most interesting “gone fishin’” portfolio I’ve ever seen.
Voya currently operates a portfolio of 21 stocks.
There are a slew of blue chip giants in its portfolio: General Electric, Proctor and Gamble, Honeywell, and DuPont. There are also some remnants of companies that no longer exist, or have morphed into other companies. For example, it bought Standard Oil, which was broken up into Exxon and Chevron.
These antiquated investments have paid off in spades. Just have a look at this chart:
Not too bad for a lazy portfolio…
All told it has outperformed a whopping 98% of its large value-fund peers over the past 10 years. It has averaged 17.3% in the last five years and 9.4% over the last 10.
This strategy has been the core of Warren Buffett’s method over the years, and the Voya Corporate Leaders trust has drawn praise from the father of low-cost index funds Jack Vogle, who has been familiar with Voya since the 1950s.
“It’s not a bad idea at all,” he said.
It certainly isn’t — if you pick the right stocks. You see, when investors trade too often, they incur the brokerage commission fees and the short-term capital gains taxes anchored to the aggressive trader. Brokers want you to trade more. Your 401(k) custodians trade more and charge you to do so. But in the end, all that overtrading does is cost investors money and force them into bad decisions…
In a study of investment brokerages, two researchers at the Dongling School of Economics and Management in Beijing found that the annual return for overtraders was 11.4%, while the average market return was almost 18%.
Another study out of the University of California found that 20% of investors who traded most actively earned an average net annual return 5.5% lower than those who kept their moves to a minimum.
That shows that overtrading can indeed hurt your overall returns, or at the very least all of that extra work (and extra trading fees) doesn’t add to your bottom line.
So, it pays to do your research and stick to a portfolio of strong stocks you plan to hold for some time.
But you cannot just throw darts at a list of blue chip dividend companies and hope for the best. You need to boil down exactly which companies have the staying power to keep rewarding shareholders for the next 80 years. That’s why I’m so high on “dividend aristocrats”…
Dividend aristocrats are the rare breed of stocks that have done so well over long periods of time, that they have been able to raise their dividend each and every year for at least 25 years. That is the kind of staying power that is absolutely crucial for a lazy, buy-and-hold portfolio.
In the last decade, these dividend aristocrats have returned an outrageous 183% — almost double the return of the S&P 500.
In short, you could conceivably hold them for 80 years if you’d like. Plus, if you choose a basket of these stocks, you can be sure that you’ll continue to get checks in the mail several times a month.
And that can add up to some serious fun money.
The best part? You get to enjoy your life. And you really cannot put a price on that…
That’s why I have compiled an easy-to-follow portfolio of the best dividend aristocrats that you can hold as long as you like. In fact, if you sign up today, you can start getting your payments in a matter of weeks.
This is a calendar of the days I’m currently getting paid:
If you’d like to start collecting extra income several times a month, claim your payment calendar right here.
