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Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 265 on March 7th of 2026.

My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am the author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". For more information on my other books and safe investing go to www.informus.ca

In this week's podcast I ask the question, "Can Investment Advisors be Trusted".

To generate enough income to live on an advisor must service and sell a hundred or more investors. The large financial institutions they work for provide bonuses and other incentives to push the investment advisor to exceed monthly targets. If these objectives are not achieved the investment advisor's job may be terminated.

Being an investment advisor is a stressful job. To survive it can result in investment advisors bending the rules. Some financial institution turn a blind eye to practices that are not only shady but pure theft. Before you turn over your life savings to an investment advisors consider the warnings in this podcast.

In my first investment book, "Income and Wealth from Self-Directed Investing" I went into detail in how an 80-year-old widow was not only robbed by the investment advisor in one major bank but also by the investment advisor in the second bank she had transferred her investment portfolio to. Her attempt to find an honest investment advisor had failed.

She then followed my directions and became a successful self-directed investor who was able to recover the hundreds of thousands she had lost as a full service investor with the two major banks.

I have been retired for 20 years and living very well off my investments. My high net worth continues to grow year-after-year along with my high income. I own no ETFs, no mutual funds or bonds. 100% of my portfolio is in financially strong, high dividend paying stocks. Even when the share prices declined in the market crashes of 2008 and 2020 my dividend income grew and was not impacted.

I select the stocks by scoring them. My background was in building large commercial risk scoring systems that rated millions of companies for banks, insurance companies and trade suppliers. To me stocks are just another form of commercial risk. My objective is to show investors how to safely invest.

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
imacd@informus.ca

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Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 264 on February 28th of 2026.

My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am the author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". For more information safe investing go to www.informus.ca

I have been retired for 20 years and living very well off my investments. My high net worth continues to grow year-after-year along with my high income. I own no ETFs, no mutual funds or bonds. How is the constant growth in my portfolio possible? Why have I never had to sell any of the stocks in my portfolio to maintain my life style?

100% of my portfolio is in financially strong, high dividend paying stocks. Even when the share prices declined in the market crashes of 2008 and 2020 my dividend income grew and was not impacted.

I select the stocks by scoring them. Years can go by without my seeing any need to make changes to my safe portfolio of 20 stocks. In this week's podcast I discuss the 8 scoring factors I use to asses stocks.

My background was in building commercial risk scoring systems that rated millions of companies for banks, insurance companies and trade suppliers. To me stocks are just another form of commercial risk,

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
imacd@informus.ca

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Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 263 on February 21st of 2026.

My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books".

How much thought have you put in choosing the bank where you deposit your money? What bank stocks have you chosen to invest in? A quick Google query as to your bank’s ratio of uninsured deposits is either going to reassure you or concern you. Those banks reporting a ratio greater than 50% in uninsured deposits to total deposit have an elevated risk.

Bank failures can occur just like they did in 2008 when cheap credit and a failure to determine the credit worthiness of home buyers created an inflated housing bubble. When that bubble burst home buyers lost their mortgage deposits and homeowners saw the equity in their houses disappear. Business and consumer bankruptcies and foreclosures spiked. Mortgage-backed securities failed resulting in a recession leading to the Lehman Brothers bank failure. This was the largest bank failure in US history.

In today's podcast we examine the 5 safest banks in North America and the 5 largest banks in North America.

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
imacd@informus.ca

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Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 262 on February 14th of 2026.

My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books".

Realizing a good dividend income from a financially strong portfolio does not mean you can ignore unnecessary drains on your income. For example, have you been scammed, conned, cheated, robbed, or otherwise relieved of money today, yesterday, last week or last month by businesses you thought you could trust? Hopefully the loss was only a few hundred dollars.

Scammers know that people tend to be more cautious with larger sums. They deliberately keep their scams under a few hundred dollars to remove your incentive to fight to recover what you have lost. The scammers that you will usually encounter aim for high volumes of small, scams rather than a single big one. They count on you treating your loss as a lesson learned and walking away. This allows the scammers to continue scamming others.

In today's podcast I will explain how you can recover your money from scammers.

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
imacd@informus.ca

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Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 261 on February 7th of 2026.

My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". I will maintain the introductory price for this new book until I have finished contacting all the previous buyers of my books have been contacted and given a chance to purchase it at its introductory price.

In this podcast I discuss the 4% rule. It advises that once you retire you should only sell off 4% of your portfolio each year if you want that portfolio to provide you with a steady income until you are ninety. However, I have found over the last 20 years that if you carefully invest equally in 20 financially strong companies that have long histories of paying high dividends you will find that your dividend income and the value of your portfolio will almost automatically keep increasing.

There is no reason your portfolio and your dividend income can not keep growing until the day die. Years will go by, where by living within your dividend income you will have no need to sell stocks to live well. Your income will rise ahead of inflation and if you live to 110 your portfolio will still be growing.

I wonder if promoting the 4% liquidation rule was a strategy spread by investment advisors to assure them of a reliable income from your portfolio for the next 30 years? If your dividend income is going to roll in automatically from your carefully chosen dividend stocks, what are you paying an advisor tens of thousands of dollars for every year? It has been my experience that few investment advisors know much about dividend investing other than it is a threat to their income.

My books are not get-rich-quick books. They are about showing people just like you how to select, from the thousands of stocks available, those few that are financially strong with long histories of paying ever rising high dividends with ever increasing share prices. My objective is to give investors the confidence to consider building safe stock portfolios as self-directed investors. Once your financial independence is realized, you will, like me, enjoy a generous, reliable, income for the rest of your life.

Please, visit my website www.informus.ca if you wish to learn more about me and my writing.

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
imacd@informus.ca

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Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 259 on January 24th of 2026.

My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". I will maintain the introductory price for this new book until all the previous buyers of my book have been informed of its release.

The latest hyper promotion of Artificial Intelligence penny stocks as the next Microsoft or Nvidia reminds me of the pump and dump strategy of stock promoters pushing gold stocks that I encountered decades ago, early in my career. Today, almost the same language is being used however they are now aided by the internet and other computerized aids.

In this podcast I analyze an actual penny stock and explain what to look for to avoid getting caught up in a pump and dump scheme in which you could lose all your money. It is astounding how much these investment schemes can make for the stock promoters at the expense of investors. No one puts a gun to the head of those purchasing these stocks. They are blinded by what they think is a "sure thing", despite the fact that they have done not even the basic research on the stock.

My books are not get-rich-quick books. They are about showing people just like you how to select, from the thousands of stocks available, those that are financially strong with long histories of paying ever rising high dividends with ever increasing share prices. My objective is to give investors the confidence to consider building safe stock portfolios as self-directed investors. Once your financial independence is realized, you will, like me, enjoy a generous, reliable, income for the rest of your lives.

Please, visit my website www.informus.ca if you wish to learn more about me and my writing.

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
imacd@informus.ca

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Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 259 on January 24th of 2026.

My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". Until February 10th, it is available at a discounted price.

Today, I compare five stocks each with a share price greater than $300. Four of them are AI stocks: Alphabet, Adobe, Microsoft and Meta Platforms. The fifth stock (traded on the New York Stock Exchange) is as far away from being an artificial intelligence stock as you can get but unlike the four AI stocks it has anunusually high dividend yield of 9.65%. It is almost impossible to find a stock with a share price over $100 paying a dividend even as high as 2%. I wondered if this high dividend stock was a scam. I had to investigate this unusual stock and share with you what I learned.

My books are not get-rich-quick books. They are about showing people just like you how to select, from the thousands of stocks available, those that are financially strong with long histories of paying ever rising high dividends and ever increasing share prices. The objective of my podcasts is help give investors the confidence to consider building stock portfolios as self-directed investors. Once your financial independence is realized, you will, like me, enjoy a generous, reliable, safe income for the rest of your lives.

Please, visit my website www.informus.ca if you wish to learn more about me and my writing.

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
imacd@informus.ca

Send us a text

Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 258, on January 17th of 2026.

My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". Until February 10th, it is available at a discounted price.

Being a miners son and having worked my way through university as a mine laborer I found it interesting this week to read an author's views about the attitudes towards money of the wage earning working class to that of high-net-worth attitude of the wealthy class. Having also been well compensated senior executive in large corporations and now living off my investments I felt qualified to add my views on the differences. Is the billionaire with his investment portfolios really happier because of his investments or do they weigh him down?

A similar question was raised by another author who suggests your objective should be to strive to spend all you have accumulated and to die with a net worth of zero. I find there is something sad to imagine seeing joy in the eyes of the soon to be departed because he has achieved his ambition of reducing his wealth to zero. You may find my views on such an ambition interesting.

My books are not get-rich-quick books. They are about taking a little time to carefully seek out financially strong companies with long histories of paying ever rising high dividends accompanied by rising share prices. Diversification, persistence and patience win out in investing. The objective is achieving financial independence for the rest of your life.

Please, visit my website www.informus.ca if you wish to learn more about me and my writing.

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
imacd@informus.ca