The internet provides an overwhelming amount of information for investors, some of it conflicting and most of it irrelevant. So much information is available that many folks suffer from analysis paralysis and end up doing nothing. Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by information. Choose one or two reliable sources for your investing information and ignore everything else. After trying several different sources of investing information over the past few decades, I decided to limit myself to the Value Line Investment Survey (VLIS) reports, supplemented by the annual reports issued online by the companies I hold in my portfolio.

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The report for Sun Life Financial presented in Figure 1 is typical of the reports prepared by Value Line. As you can see, each report contains a considerable amount of historical financial data. Fortunately, Value Line also provides an online  users' manual for their reports, which provides detailed information about the data provided in their reports. Those portions of the report that are particularly relevant to a dividend investing strategy have been described in earlier chapters of this guide.

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An individual subscription to Value Line is relatively expensive; however, you should be able to access Value Line reports online through a subscription held by the public library in one of the larger cities in Canada. Accessing the Value Line reports online by subscribing to public library is much less expensive than subscribing directly to Value Line.

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The Value Line coverage universe includes about 1,700 public companies, the majority being headquartered in the United States. However, Value Line also issues analyst reports for about eighty Canadian companies, all of which are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The Canadian companies covered by Value Line include most of the larger companies in each sector of the Canadian economy, including banking, transportation, technology, communications, mining, petroleum and utilities.

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If, as suggested, you limit the number of holdings in your portfolio to a maximum of fifteen, the Value Line universe should provide an adequate selection of financially stable Canadian companies to choose from. If you wish to have a larger pool of candidates, Value Line covers most of the mature, financially stable American companies in addition to some large European corporations.

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Before you decide to invest in shares of a particular company, you should read a selection of the company’s annual reports from prior years, so that you become familiar with the company’s management, operations, and plans for the future. In particular, you should review the company’s previous financial statements and record of dividend payments.

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