1nvest wrote:Itsallaguess wrote:
In my view, the whole 'Total Return vs Dividend Income' phrase is a complete red-herring, set up by TR proponents with a view to winning 'an argument' that no-one on the opposite side actually wants to have...
What argument?
The OP said this in his opening post -
there seems to be a continuing debate around whether it is more profitable to follow a 'total return and sell a few when needed' versus 'live off the dividends and/or yield'.I asked both him and Alaric, who's also repeated the same statement many times over the years, to please provide A SINGLE LINK to
any income-investor on these boards who has EVER suggested that income-investing is '
more profitable' or '
better' (from a TR perspective..) as an investment strategy...
Neither have been able to do so....
It's the
Keyser Söze of investment discussions......raised so often by those wishing to perpetuate a myth so that they can then rail against it, that it's almost now got a life of it's own, and anyone who might read such statements without questioning them might well start to believe that it's true....
But just like
Keyser Söze, no-one
actually knows what they mean when they say it.....as soon as anyone shines a torch onto the statement, and asks where these income-investors
actually are who say that
'it's more profitable' to use an income-strategy than a TR approach, everyone just stands there, looking at each other....
They stand there, thinking '
Well it must be true, because everyone always talks about it.....'
But just like the myth of Keyser Söze, they really don't have anything at all to back the fairy-tale up....
So is it a myth, or is it a lie?
I'm happy to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, and simply ask where these people are that are 'debating' this point on the income-investing side, and when evidence can't be found, and where people can't actually find
any income-investors who have ever made such statements, then I'd expect those people to
accept that it's a myth, and that they've been unfortunately harbouring assumptions that aren't actually true...
What gets *really* tiresome, is where it's
shown to be a myth to people who might then
still go on and repeat it, and where they've been asked to provide
evidence for their repeated views and never been able to do so. And yet they choose to *
continue* to perpetuate the myth...
At that point, I stop giving people the benefit of the doubt, and see them as nefarious agitators, just out to cause trouble, and I think it's important to both highlight that fact,
and to differentiate between those nefarious agitators and those who might simply be mistaken, and have somehow fallen for the Keyser Söze shaped myth....
Cheers,
Itsallaguess