Bought 25 shares of RDS.B today, at 49.92 USD. Not a personal buy, but for my mother, because I am mostly out of investing money myself.
Shell yields 7.56% and is an incredible bargain. The only concern with Shell is that it may not be able to maintain the dividend. This is because of the high cost of the BG purchase, and falling oil prices. I simply don't agree that the risk is so high that Shell will resort to cutting its dividend. As far as I can research, Shell last cut its dividend in 1945. So I think Shell has gone through worse than currently depressed oil prices.
The reason I prefer to buy Shell rather than, say, Exxon is, 1, it yields much more (XOM yields 4%), 2, the strong dollar is not condusive to purchase of US stocks at the moment and 3, Shell has no taxes on its dividends. That is, RDS.B payouts are not taxed, RDS.A are. Taxes can be deducted from personal taxes, what happens if you don't have any local taxes to deduct from? As you might have in an ISK?
