Sure Dividend Review – A Look At This Newsletter And Research Service

About Sure Dividend

Sure Dividend is a newsletter and research service that focuses on finding stocks that offer both growth potential and high dividends. The service tracks more than 850 US stocks, assigning them dividend risk scores and conducting detailed fundamental analysis to pick out potential winners. Each month, Sure Dividend sends out a newsletter with 10 recommendations to help you build a diversified, dividend-paying portfolio.

Keep reading our Sure Dividend review to find out if this stock newsletter and research service is right for you.

Sure Dividend Pricing Options

Sure Dividend offers three distinct newsletters.

The Sure Passive Income Newsletter costs $199 per year and gives you 10 buy-and-hold dividend stocks each month. The stocks in this newsletter are meant to be purchased once and never sold.

The Sure Retirement Newsletter also costs $199 per year and includes 10 stock recommendations each month. This newsletter includes real estate investment trusts (REITs) and master limited partnerships (MLPs) in addition to stocks. All of the recommendations offer annual yields greater than 4% at the time they’re recommended.

The Sure Dividend Newsletter is the platform’s flagship stock recommendation newsletter and is also priced at $199 per year. It covers high-dividend growth stocks.

In addition to the three newsletters, Sure Dividend offers the Sure Analysis Research Database plan for $999 per year. This includes all three newsletters, plus access to all of Sure Dividend’s research on the more than 850 stocks the service covers. You also get a weekly top 10 email highlight picks from the database. At the time of writing, this plan was discounted to $309 per year for as long as you keep your subscription.

You can try out any of Sure Dividend’s plans free for 7 days. The three newsletters also come with a 60-day money-back guarantee and prorated refunds after that.

Sure Dividend Features

Monthly Newsletter

We’ll focus our review on the flagship Sure Dividend newsletter. However, the Sure Retirement and Sure Passive Income newsletters offer similar analysis. The main difference is that they recommend slightly different dividend-paying stocks each month, with more emphasis on dividend yields and less emphasis on growth.

Unlike other newsletter services that send out daily newsletters, such as Finimize and Value Line, Sure Dividend creates a monthly newsletter that is upwards of 60 pages long. The main purpose of the newsletter is to highlight 10 stocks that the service has identified as strong dividend stocks with high growth potential.

Each of these 10 stocks is analyzed in detail, with a summary of earnings growth, fair value, and recent financial performance. The detailed reports also come with 10 years’ worth of financial data, which is helpful for investors who feel comfortable running their own fundamental analysis on these recommendations.

Notably, all of the information and analysis in the Sure Dividend newsletter is conducted by the service’s 15-person analyst team, not using automated screeners alone. It’s nice to know that there are real people behind this newsletter checking the data and ensuring that the chosen stocks are truly high quality.

Helpfully, the Sure Dividend newsletter also includes sell recommendations for stocks that were recommended in past newsletters. Any stock that cuts or suspends its dividend is an automatic sell recommendation, as is any stock for which expected valuation growth falls below the expected growth of the S&P 500. Sell recommendations are explained at the start of each newsletter. Picks that have remained in the Sure Dividend portfolio for more than several years are also covered in a special section.

From 2014 to 2020, Sure Dividend’s sold positions returned more than 61%. The S&P 500 returned 44% over the same period. Sure Dividend hasn’t provided an updated return for its dividend investing portfolio since 2020.

The newsletter is dense, so it does take some time to get through it. However, the amount of data and analysis that is included is very impressive – especially given the modest price of an annual subscription.

Stock Lists

Sure Dividend goes far beyond recommending just 10 stocks per month. The platform has dozens of Excel files that contain lists of high-quality dividend growth stocks divided up into different categories. For example, you’ll find lists of “Blue Chip Stocks,” “Dividend Kings,” and “Cheap Dividend Stocks.” There are also lists of stocks separated by the month in which they pay out a dividend and by market sector.

Each of these Excel files contains fundamental data about the company paired with performance data and current dividend yield. Since the data is in a spreadsheet, it can be easily sorted, and you can easily add any additional data that you want for custom analyses. The downside to these lists is that they don’t contain fair value estimates or Sure Dividend’s dividend risk ratings. So, you won’t get nearly the same level of detail as you do for stocks that are highlighted in the monthly newsletter.

Sure Analysis Research Database

Those critical details are provided, though, if you sign up for access to the Sure Analysis Research Database. This database includes all of Sure Dividend’s research, so you can access the same lists of stocks but get access to advanced estimates like fair value and dividend risk.

The Research Database also comes with three-page research reports for each of the more than 850 stocks that Sure Dividends covers. These are similar to the research reports found in the monthly newsletter, except that you can access them on demand – including for stocks that aren’t currently recommended by Sure Dividends. Research reports are updated every quarter for each stock in the database.

Articles

In addition to the monthly newsletter, Sure Dividend publishes numerous short articles each month. Ten of the monthly articles are typically deeper dives on the 10 stocks recommended in the newsletter at the start of the month. These articles go into more detail about what each company does, why Sure Dividend sees it as a growth pick, and the analysis of dividend growth and expected returns.

Other articles published during the month provide updates to Sure Dividend’s lists or offer instructions on how to filter the data downloads for specific types of stocks. These articles are more technical in nature and can be interesting for investors looking for alternative ways to use Sure Dividend’s analysis.

Sure Dividend Platform Differentiators

The Sure Dividend newsletter provides an immense amount of data for a relatively low annual fee. The monthly newsletter is incredibly detailed and is reminiscent of The Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor service. But instead of just two picks per month, you get 10 with Sure Dividend. In addition, whereas a service like Stock Advisor is solely focused on growth potential, Sure Dividend is organized around total return with an emphasis on dividend payouts.

Another big difference between Sure Dividend and The Motley Fool (and other newsletter services) is that you can get access to all of the research that goes into Sure Dividend’s recommendations. This requires the more expensive Sure Analysis Research Database subscription, which offers access to fair value estimates, dividend risk analysis, and additional cash flow analysis on more than 850 stocks.

This database is a real game-changer for self-directed growth and dividend investors and it makes Sure Dividend much more than just a newsletter service. It’s also a very robust fundamental analysis platform.

What Type Of Trader Is Sure Dividend Best For?

Sure Dividend is best for long-term investors who want to invest in stocks that balance growth potential with fixed income in the form of dividends. The service isn’t just for retirement investors, although the Sure Retirement newsletter is a great choice for retirees who rely on dividend payouts for income. Younger investors who want to build a balanced portfolio that includes dividend stocks across a wide range of industries will find potentially market-beating recommendations in the Sure Dividend newsletter.

More advanced and self-directed fundamental investors can benefit from the Sure Analysis Research Database. This gives you access to a huge amount of valuation analysis from experienced analysts and gives you deeper insight into the recommendations in the Sure Dividend newsletter.

One of the nice things about Sure Dividend is that the platform can be more or less complex, depending on how much time you want to commit to it. It’s easy for investors to take the top 10 picks offered in each month’s newsletter at face value to build a dividend growth portfolio. More experienced investors are also given the data needed to run their own analyses on these stocks. Very advanced investors can take advantage of the Sure Analysis Research Database to use this platform as a base for fundamental analysis, relying more on the service’s research than its recommendations.

Pros

• Modest annual subscription cost
• 10 recommendations per month
• Multiple newsletters for different investing goals
• Focuses on a blend of growth potential and dividend payouts
• Massive trove of downloadable data
• In-depth articles on each month’s top picks

Cons

• Following along with the long-term portfolio can be complex