In the world of investing, one of the goals of everyone is to have more at the end than you started with. But every once in a while, there is eager jump to make money quickly, based on some sort of inside information. You may not have it, but someone you are friendly with does or seems to, except for his inside information does not exist and he only wants your money. The author recently read a book called The Mark Inside by Amy Reading, Alfred A Knopf, 2012. In Chapter One, Ms Reading describes a typical Mark in all its acts. The rest of the book is about the tale of the person seeking revenge to con the con artist, with a healthy sprinkling of the history of people being conned interwoven through the book. It is a good read, because the process still goes on today. Hopefully the stories about the crooked politicians and police have changed for the better. One of the reasons why the con still works today is the wonderful examples of humanity that are prevalent when trust is used for good, can easily be turned and used to con people or swindle them out of their money.

Linking to dividend producing stocks, one method to avoid being conned or swindled is to keep the bulk of your money in stocks that have a history of raising their dividends over the years, as well as you have a good idea of what the companies does. The key to the above is over the long term or over a period of years, your money will grow. If you keep most of your investment money in dividend stocks, you will likely miss the big financial score (you can risk it with your other investment money) but there is almost no reason to change your dividend paying investments.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.