As a dividend growth investor, my goal is to generate a rising stream of dividend income. Thus I would have to be selective not only about picking individual stocks, but also about selecting companies from a variety of industries, countries and size, in order to avoid a widespread implosion in overall dividend income.

An investor who diversified their holdings across several sectors, shouldn’t have gotten as many dividend cuts in 2008 and 2009, in comparison to an investor whose portfolio was concentrated in certain high-yielding sectors such as financials, Canadian income trusts or business development corporations. In that case diversification mattered.
One troubling fact however is that most of the successful dividend growth stocks that I tend to focus on such as Coca Cola (KO), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Abbott Labs (ABT) are large cap stocks. This could be both good and bad for my portfolio. Most dividend growth stocks have solid competitive advantages as well as large economies of scale, against which few competitors could compete. In addition to that the entry in those markets might be too costly for a smaller producer to challenge the “big guys”. However if I added small or mid cap stocks to my portfolio, my dividend income could be diversified even further.

According to Investopedia, Large Cap stocks are those whose market capitalization is above $10 billions dollars; Mid Cap stocks are those whose market capitalization is between $2 billion and $10 billion dollars while companies whose market capitalization is between $200 million and $2 billion typically represent Small Cap Stocks.

Most large cap companies are the ones, which are mature and stable cash flow generators, which throw off enough cash to expand, reward shareholders and maintain liquidity.