Boy, do I ever hear you! It took me a lot of painful years to learn that it's far wiser to purchase a pregnant critter as opposed to a handsome one. At least the odds favor a positive result not too far down the road.
This is why it's so important that we investors search for picks that pay us WHILE we await the baby at the end of the rainbow. Distributions don't often work as a suitable offset for me, especially if I've pumped a lot of cash (aka life) into the stock. But they do represent a ladder of escape for those of us who've fallen into the well of hope. Just a couple of weeks ago I could have bought half a house for an amount of $$ equal to my underwaterness in NGL. Units closed at $8.70on the 11th of this month. That's a change in the amount of $42,500 for me. Can you imagine collecting 39 cents quarterly as nothing more than a distribution offset to unwind that amount to loss? Today I remain under par but the loss now amounts to $18,132. This may disappear over the next week or two.
Something else I've come to realize is that MLPs can be just as exciting as dividend payers. The rules of the game are a little different but for anybody willing to do the legwork, opportunity is there. And I've long seen that we can balance two MLPs against one another. An example---I complain that ALDW and NGL are locked in a battle of sorts that almost never shows both picks on the up or down side. Rather, the are in a constant tug of war, conspicuously manipulated.
Nowadays I find myself thinking differently about this. Today I may be under $18K in one but I'm up $78K in the other. On balance, then, it's the longer view that appears to make the most sense.
We all have good days and bad but we invariably look for something of a balancing not unlike what I've presented herein.
Happy hunting!
