Quick Read – Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ) demonstrates the strongest fundamentals with 26 consecutive dividend increases and sub-$25/barrel oil sands costs. – Pembina Pipeline (PBA) raised its dividend 3.5% backed by contracted fee-based revenue insulating it from commodity…
ice swings. – The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and Canadian Natural Resources wasn’t one of them. Get them here FREE
The First Trust S&P International Dividend Aristocrats ETF (NASDAQ:FID) gives U.S. investors a passport into a group of non-American companies with the rarest trait in equity income: managed, stable, or rising dividends stretching back at least seven years. FID tracks the S&P International Dividend Aristocrats Index, screening for payout discipline outside the United States, and recent trading near $22 a share follows a almost 28% one-year total return. The question for income holders of FID is whether the underlying dividends behind that performance are as durable as the aristocrat label suggests.
Because FID holds foreign companies paying foreign currencies, every distribution arrives after two filters: the underlying company’s payout discipline and the foreign exchange rate translating those payments back to U.S. dollars. With the Canadian dollar converting at 0.731 to the greenback, even healthy CAD-denominated raises can shrink at the wire. That makes per-holding analysis the only way to read FID’s income story honestly.