Dividend School
Subscribe free and get Dividends Decoded in your welcome email. Learn to analyze dividend stocks with Buffett's framework. No stock tips, no jargon, just a repeatable method. 16 years investing, 13 teaching.
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- #101
- Subscribers
- 34K
- Paid subscribers
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- Bestseller 100
- Followers
- 40K
- Paid plan
- $35/mo
- Recommends
- 34
- Podcast
- Yes
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Growth history
Subscribers (thousands, nightly)
34K on Sep 10, 2026 → 34K on Sep 30, 2026
Followers (thousands, nightly)
Rank in Substack’s finance leaderboard: #101 today · #107 a week ago
Stats worth sharing
Tracked since Sep 10, 2026 — 21 daily snapshots so far. The card below is built from what we track and refreshes nightly.
- Percentile
- Top 20%
- Best rank seen
- #95
- Rank, 7 days
- +6 places
- Followers added
- −427
- Posts
- 17
- Reactions per post
- 11
- Reactions tracked
- 248
- Tickers covered
- 1
of 525 ranked finance newsletters
on Sep 29, 2026
since tracking began
last 30 days
average, recent posts
across 23 posts
in tracked posts
Most-reacted post we have seen: Five Wonderful Businesses Added — 17 reactions on Sep 26, 2026.
Recent posts
- The 4-Layer Dividend Stock Screener (Free Template Inside)
- Five Wonderful Businesses Added
Hi everyone! The Universe is growing. We are going from 30 to 35, so we added five new names. Thirty was never a magic number. As I analyze the current Universe, I am also always looking for good companies to add. Several of these names kept appearing in my feeds, such as Carlisle and Lowe’s. Companies too good to keep ignoring and ones I would like to own when the price is right. Some of these companies fill places we have no representation in, and others are too good to keep out. So we are fixing that. In today’s post, we will discuss: Why the Universe is growing to 35 Addition #1: Carlisle…
- Is McDonald's a buy? (The live that wasn't)
Yesterday’s live didn’t go to plan. Audio gremlins took my mic out and I couldn’t get it back mid-stream. Sorry to everyone who showed up. The good news: I tracked down the problem, and I re-recorded the full walkthrough. It’s below. I cover what McDonald’s sells (hint: it’s mostly rent and royalties), how the moat holds up, where growth is coming from, and whether $238 is a price I’d pay. Grab a coffee and watch it. Hit reply and tell me if you agree with my verdict. — Dave Not investment advice. My own analysis.
- This 6.5% Yielding Stocks is Dirt Cheap (Super Safe)
On September 16, the Fed raised rates a quarter point, to between 3.75% and 4.00%. No cut, which the market was hoping for, but a raise. With the 10-year Treasury closing at about 5.00% that day, and 4.94% the next. We have to ask: how much are we being paid to take risk now? The risk-free rate pays us nearly what a lot of “high-yield” stocks pay. And we don’t need to look at payout ratios, rent coverage, or debt levels to buy the Treasury. This all makes dividend investing more challenging. When cash paid 1%, a 6% yield only needed safety. Now, that same 6% yield needs safety plus a little…
- Don’t Chase High Yields, Unless They Pass This Test
A 6.8% yield gets called a trap, and a 1.2% yield gets called quality, and most of the time nobody checks either one. “Don’t chase yield” is the first thing anybody says to a new dividend investor. As advice, it does not survive contact with our own table. The highest yielder in our Universe pays 6.8% and carries our top safety score, VERY SAFE. The next one down pays 5.8% and carries the same score. Neither one is a trap. Meanwhile, a 2.9% yielder in the same Universe has not raised its dividend in three years, and I did not notice until I went looking. So the rule cannot be “high yield…
- These 5 Dividend Stocks are Dirt Cheap (September 2026)
Hi everyone! One of the five companies on today’s list cut its dividend 55% on July 31. I pulled up a screener alert on it dated September 10. It listed the yield at 8.2%. That number is built from a dividend the company stopped paying in July, divided by a September price. The trailing dividend told the story it did, but the company cut the dividend, which is a story we will tell. It also broadcast that a cut was on the horizon once we dug into the financials. That is this month’s lesson, and it runs through all five names. Every company reports trailing numbers because history is what we…
- Dominos: Dirt Cheap or Debt Trap?
Domino’s is a simple business. Most people assume they make money from pizza, but that’s not quite the story. Domino’s generates royalties from 22,531 stores, most of which they don’t own. They financed those stores with $4.8 billion of debt, which the company is not on the hook for. Today, we will discuss what this is and how much it is worth. In today’s post, we will dig into: Answering a Reader’s Question The Bet What Domino’s Does How Domino’s Makes Money The Moat and the Competition The Financials Is the Dividend Safe? Where the Growth Comes From Management and Capital Allocation The…
- Just reply with a number
The special offer for Dividend School Pro closed on Sunday, and I noticed you didn’t take advantage of the offer. I’m just trying to understand why. No pitch. No sales link. Reply with the number that fits best: 1 - The price 2 - I wasn’t sure what I’d actually get 3 - I’m waiting until more stocks or features are added 4 - I want to try it before I commit 5 - I already use something else. Or just type your own reason. I read every reply personally. That’s it. One number. Thanks, Dave
- Closes Tonight
Tonight at 10 pm Eastern, the $299 price ends and goes back to $369. What is on the other side of the wall? The five September Best Buys, names and Buy Below prices The full Dividend Universe, all thirty Every deep dive, including August’s The Prompt Pack and the infographic library Tools, earnings updates, portfolio updates every other week One of the five is that REIT. 7% yield, eight straight annual raises behind it, trading 17% under my Buy Below, and it raised guidance twice this year. It is still locked. “How much of it do I actually get during the trial?” All of it. Nothing is held…
- The Cost of Doing It Yourself
Let’s take the other option seriously for a minute, because it's real. Doing this research yourself is completely doable. The filings are free on sec.gov. The math is arithmetic. I taught the whole four-test screen in an email a couple of weeks back and gave it away on purpose. So what does doing it ourselves actually cost? Say thirty companies, and say twenty minutes each per quarter to read the release, pull three lines off the cash flow statement, check the payout, and note the dividend action. That is ten hours a quarter, forty hours a year, before we have valued a single one of them. Add…
- Want to See the Work First? Here's a Whole Issue, Free.
Fair question to ask before paying for anything: is the work any good? So rather than describe it, here is one. The Johnson & Johnson deep dive is unlocked. No signup, no card, nothing behind it. This is the kind of thing that only comes up when you read. A screener will tell us Johnson & Johnson pays out 47% of earnings and move on. Open the cash flow statement, and the dividend takes 63% of free cash flow ($12.4B of dividends / $19.7B of free cash flow). Add the $6 billion buyback sitting ahead of it in the capital priority order, and 93% of every free cash flow dollar is already spoken…
- Double the Yield of the S&P 500, Growing 71% Faster
Thirty companies. That is the whole Dividend Universe. Not three hundred, and not the sixty-nine names on the Aristocrats list. Thirty, because thirty is the number one person can genuinely follow every single month. Why does the number matter so much? Because “monitored” has to mean something. Every month, each of the thirty gets: The quarter read, if it reported Any dividend action, raise, freeze, or cut A fresh coverage check on free cash flow A recalculated Buy Below price That last one is where the Best Buys come from. We re-run valuation on all thirty every month, and the five trading…
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