Dividend Yield Play

This falls into the category of 'sounded like a good idea at the time'. The idea is you buy shares in a company about to pay a dividend a couple of weeks before they go ex-div. You hold them for at least 45 days so you get the tax advantage of the franking credits and hope that the shares have returned to at least your purchase price after they recover from dropping as they go ex-div. Or so the theory goes. Astute financial types could show you countless examples over recent years, most typically among banking stocks.

So I had a go with Westpac just before they went ex-div just before Christmas. I only bought 250 (this was my little test experiment) gross cost $30.33 each. I picked up the dividend, a nice little $170 and settled in for the return to the +$30 zone. Along came the financial tsunami and destroyed that little plan. The shares are currently worth about $25 with a paper loss of a bit over $1000.

Any other bright ideas out there I can financially embarrass myself with ? Yes, I tried Centro, that was very effective as well.

Comments

[Red Ink]

Ian,

You are on a roll here .... I think Allco is worthy of a second look ... great assets, sound management, nice balance sheet, good corporate structure and attention to governance issues ..... get into them.

If you don't fancy them, I suggest you could do worse than AdultShop .. but not much.

[IanH]

You're going to think this is funny, but I already tried Allco - at $7.75, and yesterday at $1.17. Losing money on both counts. Welcome back Red !