2 Dividend Plays, Taking Profits, Dry Powder (undefined:CAG)

Listen here or on the go via Apple Podcasts and Spotify

David Alton Clark, who runs Retirement Income Warrior, shares how he’s taking advantage of the volatility by taking profits and getting into a dividend name (0:35) Past performance (16:15) Top income pick (23:00)

Transcript

Rena Sherbill: Always happy to welcome back David Alton Clark to the show.

He runs Retirement Income Warrior and recently wrote a book called Commanding Retirement Income. Book week at Investing Experts.

Dave, welcome back to the show. Really happy to have you back on.

David Alton Clark: Thanks, Rena, it’s great to be on.

Rena Sherbill: So here we are basically in the middle of 2026. How has the year gone for you and your service? What’s been going on?

David Alton Clark: It’s been a highly volatile year, volatility also creates opportunity. So if you have the proper planning in place and discipline, you can take advantage of the volatility. It’s been pretty crazy with Trump on again and off again, war with Iran, but we’ve been able to take advantage of that and actually have already gained 93,000 in capital income from selling stocks at their highs.

I just recently took profits in four of the income growth portfolio, Meta (META), (AMD), Amazon (AMZN) and Corning (GLW) were all up 20 to 40 % at their peak just recently. They ran up really quick.

One of my rules is that if you, the faster it goes up, the faster it can come down.

I actually added those at the lows we just had about a month ago between February and March. Those are four stocks I added into the growth portfolio, which is really the portfolio where I harvest the capital gains from there and then redeploy that into the income side of the portfolio.

So that’s really the purpose of that portfolio. And when I have stocks that run up 20 and 40 % AMD was up 40 % in a month. The other three Corning, Meta and Amazon were all up 20 to 25 % just in this last month. So just recently I took profits on all of those. And so that worked out really well.

But I’m not really sure what’s going on right at this exact moment. I’m kind of holding steady and telling everyone to strap themselves in because who knows what’s gonna happen over the next day or so.

Right now, I haven’t allocated all of that money. I still have a lot of dry powder. I think at the time before I took profits in those, I was 72 % allocated and now I’m down to 58%. So I have a large amount of dry powder ready to go right now.

I did buy one thing, Conagra (CAG), which is kind of a point of max pessimism buy, they’ve paid a dividend and never missed it since 1976. It’s $1.40 and their stock has dropped significantly down over the last year to where it’s about $14 now, I think. So the dividend yield has gone up to 9%.

So it’s one of those dividend capture deals where the stock has gone down so much that the dividends rose risen high, higher than it normally should be. So I locked in a position on that, just a half a position right now. Four percent is a full position for me.

I bought a two percent initial position and I’ve got two percent back up in case it goes down more. If it starts to run away, I’ll lock in the rest of that.

But locking in that nine percent gain on a company like ConAgra that’s faithfully paid the dividends since 1976. And then they just had earnings and every one of the management team was, you know, stated that they’re dedicated to paying the dividend and they’re not thinking about a cut or anything like that.

And they actually still have about 75 % payout ratio. So they have coverage on it. So they’ve still got a little bit of cushion there. And as of their last earnings report, things are looking like they’re take the strategies they’ve implemented to make a comeback seem like they’re taking hold.

So I took a shot on that one. That’s a little bit of a higher risk one, but it’s a nice dividend to collect on that.

Rena Sherbill: Do you want to get into more detail if you would about what are the strategies that they’ve been implementing that seem to be righting the ship and also why is it a higher risk play?

David Alton Clark: Well, the strategies they’re implementing, they’re in the food business and that’s kind of shifted a little bit lately with the GLP-1 meds and things like that. People are eating differently in the different categories. So they’ve really taken a look at that and changed up their category, their food offerings in the different categories to where they include that.

And they’ve done some work on the back end as far as the cost of creating all the different foods that they make. So that’s really what they’ve done, cost reduction and avoidance.

And they’ve also expanded their different offerings to take into consideration some of the changing dietary likings of the general public right now. So they’ve kind of shifted away from some of the more high fat sugary foods to more healthy foods and things like that.

It seems to be working, they’re up like 2 % across the board on all of those things.

And you asked what makes it risky? What makes it risky is that, you know, they do have 75 % payout ratio.

The yield is 9%. They are really down at the bottom. Technically, this is what I call a point of max pessimism buy. So they have bounced slightly off the bottom of the downtrend channel.

This is from a technical perspective, which creates some of the risks. They are in a solid downtrend channel for probably the last year, but the stock just recently bounced off the very bottom of that channel and popped up a little bit.

It hasn’t made a total complete trend reversal yet. And that’s really, if that occurred, I would say it was less risky, but I wanted to take advantage of getting that 9 % yield.

So I went ahead and bought it when it just barely moved off the bottom of the downtrend channel. Right now it’s still, the momentum is against it as far as there could be further down draft selling, but I decide that’s why I kept 2 % in reserve to take another shot at it, fire another bullet at it if it does go lower.

But that’s why it’s still risky. And plus the food business, there’s a lot of competition. They’re doing really well, but there’s a generic brands now. There’s just the food, grocery businesses is super hyper competitive.

Rena Sherbill: And conversely, what would you say about the four names that you took profits on?

I know that you said that they had a price run up. What other factors played into that decision or to those decisions?

David Alton Clark: I’m glad you asked that question because what I told my members is that this wasn’t a selling of these stocks based on the long-term growth story changing.

I still believe in all four of the stocks that I sold in the long-term, but the issue is that when I’ve seen this too many times before in my history where if something runs up 40 % in less than a month and then the rest of them like 20 to 25 % in less than a month, it’s very easy to see those. It’s kind of like hot money in a way.

And you can see those gains evaporate quickly on headlines, of macro headlines, like the whole problem with the Iran war and Trump. If Trump and Iran or the US and Iran don’t make a deal by tomorrow and we start bombing Iran again, I’m thinking the market’s probably gonna drop again and maybe I’ll get another chance to get back into those at a lower point.

But also they’re in the portfolio, the growth portfolio, which I call the income garden. anytime one of those, I have a moonshot portfolio also for growth and those are ones where I don’t take profits on those like (IONQ) is in my moonshot portfolio and it was up 60 % just last week.

But I didn’t sell that one because I’m expecting that one to be a multi-bagger maybe 10 times higher or whatever a few years out from now. So that’s one where I don’t touch those but ones in the income garden growth portfolio when they eclipse the 20 % mark that’s when I review the situation and say, okay, what am I going to do here?

And then each one of those ran up so fast. We had a V-shaped recovery. The stock market went down by about 20 % or whatever on all of these stocks were trading 20 % off their highs or more.

The stock market in the beginning of April just shot right back up to where it was before. And so when I looked at all of those, I decided I’m going to go ahead and take profits on those.

Then I’m sure with all the volatility we have. then another factor that came into the fore was that we’re in a midterm year and that’s coming up pretty soon. And usually that brings on a whole other layer of uncertainty and volatility because of all the political headlines and back and forth and you don’t know who’s going to win and will the policies change. And so I’m expecting another series of volatility and downturn as far as that goes.

But those are ones that I would still join back into. It wasn’t because I thought that they actually, you know, their long-term growth story changed. And I also, that was just recently earlier in the year, I was, I think last time we talked, I told you that I loaded up on energy stocks because I felt like energy was gonna be big this year.

I had no idea that this is what was gonna cause it, but it was really such a there was such a negative narrative on energy coming into the year.

And as we’ve discussed many times before when we talk about ExxonMobil (XOM), the thing is the seeds of the coming boom are sown during the current bust is my statement on that and it’s cyclical oil.

So I bought into a lot of oil stocks. I had Chevron (CVX), (OXY), (EQT), Valero (VLO), (EPD), in each of the different categories of oil and gas. And when the war kicked off, all of those spiked up huge.

That’s what created a lot of the profits at the beginning of the year because I sold out of those earlier too.

I still have some oil exposure in ETFs like (AMLP), but it’s much reduced right now.

Rena Sherbill: To the point of how the market has been moving and it’s hard to assess, even though you’ve talked before about what your strategy is and to your point, sometimes the strategy pays off in ways that you couldn’t even predict.

But has there been anything about the this evolving market and the evolution of investing in general that has caused you to rethink or tweak anything in your strategies?

David Alton Clark: That’s another great question, Rena, to think about.

Maybe tweaking some because we are in a highly volatile market right now. And so for the last 10 years from the great financial crisis of in 2008 to 2009, all the way to 2020.

It was really easy to make money. mean, there was zero interest rate, you know, remember the ZIRP policy. And I made a lot of money during that time, but I think a lot of other people did too. It was pretty simple.

You really knew what the Fed’s policy was going to be. And anytime there was a pullback, it was by the dip and you were going to, you’re going to be a winner. So I think a lot of people were a little overconfident at that point in time thinking, man, I’m a stock market genius.

And I’m not saying they weren’t, but I’m saying it was a little bit easier to make money then. Once the pandemic hit and then we just had a series of huge macro issues that you’ve had to be able to navigate. Luckily, I learned a lot.

Previously, my experience goes all the way back to the dot com boom bust. And then, you know, I was actually out in Silicon Valley at that time. And so I was like, I feel I call I give it like I had the Icarus type experience. I was flying really close to the flame, to the sun of that. And so I learned a lot from that as far as navigating these these big macro issues.

And then the same thing with the 2008 House of Cards falling. I was actually in real estate at that time. And so I was lucky to be right there. So I think the strategy’s changed from the last 10 years, which has been pretty simple that there are going to be zero interest rates to now. It’s a little bit more, I’m a little more active than I used to be as far as these buys and sells. I usually, I would be holding them for longer.

(AMD) during that time, I bought AMD, I think back at like for $3 and something in 2011 or something like that. And then I let it ride all the way up to 140. It was like a huge winner for me. But now I’ve changed my strategy with so much volatility and I’m getting older now. And so I’m really more about harvesting income, harvesting the growth capital appreciation and redeploying it.

So that’s really what’s changed. But recently, I would say that I’m a little more focused on taking profits when I need to. And also, I’ve shrunken down my shot group. That’s one of my rules during volatility. I’m glad I finally thought of that when I was rambling on.

But in times like this, I think it’s important. It’s good to be diversified. But when things are so volatile like this, you really need to take a look at your holdings and maybe trim away the ones you’re not so convicted in and focus in more on the ones that you have more conviction in and a higher, you feel like they’re going to do better.

Right now I’ve got 22 total holdings across the portfolio when normally I might have more like 30 or something like that. So I’ve kind of trimmed them up and tightened into just my highest conviction names.

Rena Sherbill: I know people love to hear about the returns. Would you be willing to discuss some of the returns that you’ve had at Retirement Income Warrior? General performance.

David Alton Clark: As of right now, we’ve got a total return of 101 % right now since we started the service in June of 2022, which equates to about 26% total return per year. That is built on we’ve had 502,000 in income coming from distributions, dividends, and interest.

And then 479,000 has come from the harvesting of capital depreciation sold securities. Over this last, and not everything is a winner. So we have a 51% capital gains level right now since inception.

But just for 2026, I’ve got my list of all the stocks I sold. And so I’ve taken profits on some Amazon (AMZN) took profits. It was up 23%. Corning (GLW) was up 22%. AMD was up 40%. Meta (META) was up 23%.

Now, one other thing we haven’t talked about yet is the narrative on BDCs and private credit. That’s been a big issue lately and I had a couple of names that were involved with that. (BIZD), (USA), (OBDC), I actually took losses on those.

BIZD, I sold out of that one at 19%. It was a $12,000 loss, which you can use for tax loss harvesting against your gains. So it’s kind of a tax loss harvesting thing. But also on that one, I’d collected like $30,000 worth of distributions already. It was something I’d held for a long time.

So all of the ones that I sold in the income side, I took these losses of 6,000, 12,000 on OBDC, but I had huge income from those and I didn’t want to see that completely evaporate. And those are ones where I felt that that narrative had shifted. still, I still felt great about those companies. They were best in class.

But sometimes even if you feel that way yourself, if the narrative is so pervasive, you might wanna say, hey, let me just cut out of these, use it as tax loss harvesting and come back and take another look at them once this is over. So those were some of the losers. Those were the three or four, the four that were down for me were.

BIZD, USA, OBDC and I actually sold out of Salesforce (CRM) too. When I bought into that, how it’s been AI versus the software companies and Salesforce (CRM) was just beaten down.

I think it was down like 50 % or something like that. So I kind of took a flyer, a point of max pessimism buy on that at one point. But once it hit, when I buy something like that, I watch it at every percentage.

When it’s down 10, if it’s down 10 % or up 10%, I double check it. Same thing every 10%, 20%, whatever. And so it was down 10 % from the time. And I only started with a half a position and it was down 10 % and then I just reevaluated it.

And I thought, maybe I entered in a little too quick. So I went ahead and sold out of that one too.

But overall, we’re up 10 % in capital appreciation for this year, 93,000 total, including all the gains and losses.

Rena Sherbill: We had Samuel Smith on from High Yield Investor last week talking about providing some context about the private credit sector and his pick has been Blue Owl Capital (OWL), not necessarily for this year specifically, but his pick at the beginning of this year.

He was saying that the fears about that space, kind of what you were saying are overblown. Anything else that you would add to that conversation about the private credit space?

David Alton Clark: I think he’s right. Yeah, he’s right on that. And the Blue Owl Capital, it’s really, it’s really those people get confused between the public companies and private companies.

Blue Owl Capital’s issues are with their private credit where they’re there, the people are asking for to get their money out. And they have a rule where you can only get 5 % out a month. But I think Blue Owl actually said, okay, and they sold off some assets and gave people back like 40 % for what they’re asking for.

And if you really look at it, I’d have to check it again, but I was, I did check that out back in the day when Blue Owl was really in the headlines. And I think that was really their one fund that was being, people wanted to get their money back out of was only 2 % of their total earnings or their total assets under management.

So it really was kind of a misnomer to think that the blue owl was going to have trouble. There are some great ones out there.

If I was going to go back in, I’d probably go in with something like Blackstone (BX), I think is on top of that. And they had a lot of redemptions that people were asking them for redemptions.

But I think it’s more of a situation where the investors in those didn’t really understand the rules that those are hard assets and they’re not liquid. And so it’s not like you can just go in there and say, hey, I want my money out of there. Well, they have to sell something.

They got to sell some condominiums or sell an apartment complex or something to get the funds out of those types of entities. I really think it’s just everything’s coming back now too. And so I think it was just, I don’t think it’s gonna be the same thing as like the great financial crisis.

What I told my people was it reminds me of the, we had, remember we had the issue with the regional banks a while back when one went bankrupt in California and then one went bankrupt in New York and then people were like, my God, know, the regional banks are going under and the whole regional bank sector just took a dive bomb.

I feel it’s kind of a replay of that where there was a few issues, people wanting redemptions from Blackstone and Blue Owl, and then it’s kind of blown up into something bigger than it really is. So I think it’s gonna be fine. And I do still have some income stocks that are, know, adjacently related to that. And they’ve all made pretty big comebacks that were down before bigger.

But now they’ve all come back to less than down 10%.

Rena Sherbill: Do you want to say some of those names?

David Alton Clark: This is something I’m getting ready to write an article on, but I’ll give you my top income pick that I feel is the best of the breed in the higher yield sector. It’s Starwood Properties. It’s an mREIT. Barry Sternlich runs it. I’ve owned this forever and it has right now, it has a 10.47 % yield. It’s trading, I think, I didn’t look just today, but around 18, but it’s actually highly diversified. And it was down along with all the other stocks that are kind of involved in the real estate sector and the private equity.

But Barry Sternlich, I’ve been around a long time, I’m gonna kind of date myself here, back in the day when the credit, I don’t know if you remember the credit union crash or whatever of 1982, when the credit unions like went, were you? But in 1982 was really the first commercial real estate, just debacle from the credit unions were justgiving away money and not doing enough risk assessment or whatever and the whole thing came crashing down and they created something called the Resolution Trust Corporation where the government, all these commercial real estate buildings all were bankrupt and so they had to create a government entity to sell those for pennies on the dollar.

And I really remember because I was in college and I was dating a lady that was actually working for Ernst & Young and she was working with the Resolution Trust Corporation and she was telling me all about it and how all these big buildings on the Riverwalk in San Antonio were selling for pennies on the dollar and she kind of explained the whole thing to me. I was like, wow.

But Barry Sternlich was, that’s when he started his own company. He was working for another real estate developer, but he went out on his own at that point in time and bought up some of those buildings for pennies on the dollar. And then later after that, he started Starwood Properties and started paying a dividend. And one really great fact about his company is that it’s the only MREIT in history that has never cut the dividend.

So that’s really important. And he had to go through the 2000.com debacle, didn’t cut the dividend. He went through the great financial crisis, didn’t cut the dividend. And he is just over and over stresses the fact that you can count on that. Now he hasn’t grown it. It’s 48 cents a quarter.

And he’s not growing the dividend, but you can count on that 48 cents. And it’s 10 % yield right now. And it’s highly diversified. Got a great balance sheet. That dividend right now actually isn’t covered by income coming in, but he’s got so much money and so much diversification that it’s not a problem for them to cover the dividend.

The whole situation is looking up for them right now. So Starwood Properties (STWD) is my top pick for that. And I’m getting ready to do an article on Seeking Alpha about it shortly.

Rena Sherbill: What would you say has enabled them to not cut the dividend? Is it the fact that they haven’t grown it? Or what else would you attribute that to?

And what would you say are, if any, what concerns you have about Starwood?

David Alton Clark: Sometimes diversification of income streams can also, it can be a big positive, but it can also turn into a negative. So they’re not your standard mREIT, getting income from just one source. They’ve got, he’s expanded. Has several different vehicles that he can get income from.

I’m not concerned about him cutting the dividend because I think they got one or two billion in cash and cash equivalents that he could always use to pay the dividend.

Plus, he’s got a massive credit line. So there’s no issue with liquidity with Starwood. So the dividends may not be covered by the quarterly income that they have coming in, which is probably almost covering it, but it’s not 100%. But that small percentage or whatever that is missed by, he’s been going for, like I said, since 1982.

So he’s got billions of dollars and huge credit lines. And so that’s why I’m not worried about the dividend. The risks are that he is, he does have one of the non risks is that he’s not highly focused in on like apartment complexes and office, which is the office space, office buildings are kind of under attack right now because everyone thinks that AI is going to delete those people’s jobs that go to a building and sit in there in front of their computer in their cubicles.

And so a lot of people are really worried about office buildings right now. And so he’s really stayed away from that. It’s a very small percentage of the portfolio, I think less than 10%. And so he’s done a good job of focusing in on that, but also, he has a lot of different diversified areas of income, which can also be an issue at times where something seems to fall apart.

It’s kind of like the conglomerate thing, like what happened to (GE) when they were a big conglomerate and they had all these different branches and companies and it just like one was up, it was like whatever one would be up, the other would be down and you never could make it go.

That’s one of the risks with Starwood too, but he’s been handling that pretty well also. That’s one of the risks. It could be a whack-a-mole situation, but I don’t really think so. GE was definitely whack-a-mole.

Rena Sherbill: Any other whack-a-moles in the income investing space or the opposite of a mole? Any, what else are you looking at in the income space? Bonds, anything to say there?

David Alton Clark: One thing about the bonds we talked about last time. So I do have, you know, as far as income goes, I like to have some diversification in the different vehicles. And one of them is for actually for bonds, I’m not really a bond expert. So I like to outsource that to the specialists. And so I have investment in the bearings global short duration.

high yield fund and it’s a closed in fund and it yields about 10%. And the thing I like about that is that it’s got high current income while it preserves capital because it’s only short duration, less than three years, which reduces the interest rate risk. So that’s how they stay short and it’s spread out across

different geographies, US, Europe. And so that’s really where I’ve got the bonds concentrated. One thing that I wanted to say that I’m glad you brought that up is I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to invest in MLPs that create a K1. It’s actually a partnership. And I know that Samuel Smith, he invests a lot in the MLPs.

Considering it I’m going to invest in I’ve got (AMLP) which is an ETF which has a bunch of MLPs within its portfolio but there’s no k1 Tax form that you have to fill out. It’s not a partnership so you can gain exposure to MLPs by using a MLP which is one of my holdings and then skip the whole tax burden also, you can’t really hold an MLP and an IRA account.

And so just for myself, I was investing in those because I am an oil man from Texas. But finally, this last year, I decided that I sold off the MLPs that I had for the service and in my own private portfolio.

And I told my members, I said, we’re going to invest in AMLP and also maybe a pipeline company, some of them have shifted over to where they do 1099. And so MLPs are great. You get a bigger return on your capital, but it comes with a lot of red tape. And then also you can’t own them forever because it’s a partnership. they consider the distribution they give to you a return of capital.

And so at one point in time, if it’s yielding 10 % within 10 years, you should have gained back all of the money that you put towards it. And then you might start getting taxed regular income as taxed on those distributions as regular income. So it’s just a big hassle with the taxes and everything else. You might as well just own AMLP. So that’s one piece of advice that I’ve given my members recently, as far as the high yield stuff.

Rena Sherbill: I mentioned at the beginning that you recently wrote a book called Commanding Retirement Income, a disciplined framework for retirement income generation, wealth creation and capital preservation.

How would you say the book differs from your service, Retirement Income Warrior, and what made you want to write the book now?

David Alton Clark: Thanks for asking that question. I have been working on that book for a few years and it’s really a culmination of all my experience as far as it does coincide with the methodology of the retirement income warrior investing group.

And that’s the same methodology and framework that I’ve been using to run the group. It’s been really successful. And but the book goes beyond just the portfolio management. And this is only one aspect of your retirement income. You’ve also got all, it’s more the book brings together everything that starts off.

It’s more focused on the mindset in the beginning of of the book. get into the first chapter is called Retirement is earned, not given. And so I just kind of go into getting the right mindset about, okay, the biggest issue that most people have is when you go from accumulation to distribution, that’s when you go into retirement.

You’ve got certain strategies that you use for your portfolio during your accumulation years. You you’re still working, you’re adding to your 401k, you’re looking for growth, you want to expand your capital, you’re looking for capital appreciation and things of that nature.

But when you get to your retirement age and you switch to distribution, the whole game changes. But a lot of people don’t change their methodology with managing their portfolio to go along with that.

So there’s some adjustments you need to make. So I start off with the mindset in the beginning of the book. And then I get into a lot of people don’t, don’t really think about what type of retirement are they looking for? So it kind of goes into like, what do you want out of your retirement? Do you want to go and travel the world? You just you’ve got to define what you’re looking for out of retirement before you can set your priorities and goals.

And it just goes into all the different things. Okay, here’s the type of retirement you want to have. Okay, what are your sources of income? So there’s more than just your portfolio income. Your portfolio income should just be an additive to you. You’ve got social security, maybe you got annuities, you got all these different things. Maybe you’re gonna still work a little bit.

Then it gets into beyond the portfolio as far as legacy planning, where how are you gonna distribute your funds to your kids and things like that, or, you are you gonna, some people, want to burn it all up, they’re gonna spend it all so you gotta think about those kinds of things. I also get into the 4 % rule where it, where it works for you and against you. A lot of people just take that and think like that’s the way to do it, but there is some flaws to that. But also I get into, you know, the, the do’s and don’ts of, of retirement.

And just it’s a full-fledged book from start to finish about retirement. give all the different details regarding how, when social security starts, the required minimum distributions. I just get into everything on that.

Rena Sherbill: Dave, do you have a motto that you live by or invest by?

David Alton Clark: Well, the patience equals profits is probably one of my top mottos. And then I’ve got another saying, it’s the seeds of the coming boom are sown during the current bust. So that’s kind of like by, you know, when things are looking bad, that’s the time to buy. And then when when everyone’s excited, you know, that’s really the time to take profits.

And let me think I had I had one other one that I just came up with. I have them in my book. I actually put in the back of the book, one of the appendices is I put the famous investing quotes from all these different people that I’ve really followed, like Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Peter Lynch, Munger, Howard Marks, Jack Bogle, and then I wanted to put mine in there too, but I didn’t want to be like, I’m one of the investing greats or whatever. So I said, here’s my principles, and stay, humble on that one.

So my first one is patience equals profits. And then my second one is every dollar must have a purpose before it is invested.

You just can’t be flippant about what you’re buying. You’ve got a purpose for that. Is it for income? Is it for growth? Is it in my moonshot portfolio? Is it one where you’re going to set it and forget it like Ron Popeil and then you think it’s going to be a multi-bagger, you’re to leave it away.

Is it something that you’re going to use in retirement to pay the bills where you got to pay attention to that because that’s one of the ones that you’re counting on to pay your monthly bills.

Making money in markets requires courage in your convictions amid market mayhem. So I learned that a long time ago. It’s almost like when the markets are volatile and they go down and your position’s down 20%, you just have the urge to just, let me just hit the button. I don’t want to endure any more of this pain.

But what I’ve found is a lot of times that’s actually when you should double down or buy more. Because a lot of times when I would do that, the next thing a week later to be like, oh, look, it’s up 10%.

And so you really need to own things that you believe in so that when that time of mayhem comes, you’re not weak and just sell out. Like Warren Buffett said, if you can’t handle a 50 % draw down in a name that you own, you shouldn’t be in the market. So that’s happened to him a couple different times.

And then my final one, this is the one I was trying to, I really liked this one. I might be a little bit biased, but it’s investing rules are written in calm to be followed in chaos. So, you’ve got the rules and the discipline there. So when the chaos comes, you’ve already got your rules written in your mindset and you know how to execute so you’re not doing it just emotionally.

But those are my top five.

Rena Sherbill: Good stuff to keep in mind for sure. Especially these days, but all throughout. Dave, thanks again for another great conversation. Very elucidating for listeners.

Again, it’s Retirement Income Warrior. That’s your investing group on Seeking Alpha. Can folks get in touch with you by sending you a DM on Seeking Alpha or is there a better way to get in touch with you?

David Alton Clark: They can send me a DM on Seeking Alpha. I’m on X at DavidAltonClark.

And we are running a 15% discount right now for coming up on our 4 year anniversary. So there’s a discount on that.

I also give an additional discount to veterans, teachers and first responders as well. And they can just DM me on Seeking Alpha and I’ll arrange that for them as well. But we’re doing really well. We’re getting a lot of new signups. It’s been going really well and I’m really excited about how it’s going and we got a lot of dry powder and I see a lot of opportunity coming up ahead. So we’re going to be doing a lot of business in the coming months this year.

Editor’s Note: This article discusses one or more securities that do not trade on a major U.S. exchange. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.