The Barbarian Investor said:
Thanks for that I've e-mailed him the link to Don's thread.
He's a long term investor not a trader as in his opinion if he sells a great stock he just has to try and find another one just as good or better; he doesn't have the inclination or know how, so he tries to buy for value, dividend and hopefully increasing share price (not that it matters to him as he doesn't sell too often).
A really simple alternative for someone looking for yield is to check out the Saturday newspaper (for me in Qld it's the Courier Mail) which has a list of the top 100 (which sounds like what your friend is looking for if he doesn't want to be involved in spec stocks), with their + or - change for the week, dividend yield, and franking etc.
If he has stocks with which he is really happy and which are providing him with a good return, plus growth, why does he want to sell? One of Warren Buffet's admonitions was to "buy stocks that you never want to sell"
e.g. I bought more CBA in July 2004 at under $31. It is now $42 and has a
dividend yield of 4.7% with 100% franking. Why would I want to sell it?
Perhaps I could get more in some spec stock, but at the same time I might lose my initial investment. Meantime, I would certainly lose a lot of sleep at night worrying about it.
If he is going to sell a good stock only to buy another similar, why would he want to incur the CGT involved?
I guess there's a "trading" personality and a "buy and hold investor" personality. Having had a go at both, I'm much more comfortable with the latter.
Some of the infrastructure stocks are providing very good returns and would mostly be regarded as pretty solid.
Julia