What diving dividends tell us about stocks

Company profits are down and firms are hoarding cash - and cutting dividends. Investors should be very cautious.

Tumbling dividends have left investors "damned to give more than they get in return", says Jeremy Warner on Telegraph.co.uk.

In the first half of this year, UK-listed firm raised some £51bn in new capital, according to an analysis by share registration firm Capita Registrars. At the same time, they paid out just £28bn in dividends, down 10% on the same time last year. Such a gulf is "rare, if not unprecedented" "even in the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s, it didn't happen".

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