The Dangers of Investing Solely Based on Dividend Yield

Dividend investing is a popular strategy among investors in Singapore, particularly for those seeking a steady income stream, me included. However, focusing solely on high dividend yields can lead to poor investment outcomes. In this post, I shall remind myself why solely focusing on chasing high dividend yields without other considerations and analyses can be risky, and highlight some examples of Singapore-listed stocks that once paid high dividends but consequently experienced declining share prices, resulting in a non-favourable investment. For a start, it will be good to understand that dividend yield is calculated as such: Therefore, a high dividend yield can be a result of high annual dividends per share, or low current share price, or both. To me, a high dividend yield is anything above 8%. Kindly note that this yield is just a number that I generated randomly since I started investing (I do not have any financial rationale or formula to generate this yie...