I'm not trying to be argumentative (he said), but Fidelity shows KMI yield is 4.3% not 8%.
(You are not one of those people who thinks "yield on cost" is a thing, are you?)


Awkwardly, the 1st 2 news items are downgrades, one for lower price target, one for downgrade from rom NEUTRAL to SELL. If you care about those things -- opinions from professionals.


A common theme was that one should try to have a portfolio that provided what they called a "total return." It was very simple...total return was long term stock price appreciation along with a growing dividend.

Yes, all the professionals themed that "total return" was the target. But they didn't say total return was what you said. I absolutely doesn't include anything like "a growing dividend".
Normally it means price appreciation with all dividends reinvested.
Simpler to compute and good enough for a first approximation is price appreciation with all dividends added back in.

One thing I have never quite understood.
Studies claim that about 70% of people reinvest the dividends. If that's the case then there is no reason to care about the dividend, since the money is going to stay in the company.

Two things. If you are investing for income, then the price action is important, since at the end of the day the overall return is going to be dominated by what the price is when you sell it. It does no good if it totalled $20,000 in dividends but took $25,000 of capital loss. Which, sadly, has happened with many many "income-focused" CEFs and ETFs.

Eh, whatever. De gustibus non est disputandum.