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At risk of being massively downvoted yet again I wanted to post a follow-up on SCHD and my thoughts and take-aways from my previous post on this ETF. Thanks for your patience, all. My summary is as follows:
1. SCHD is a "Dividend Growth Strategy" ETF. This is a particular type of ETF that focuses specifically on companies that aim to increase the dividends paid by their stocks. What makes this strategy unique and different to the type of compound growth a fixed income investment, like a bond fund, would offer you, is that it has an additional dimension of compounding - that is, each individual stock experiences NAV growth as well as an increase of its dividend, whether or not the capital gains/dividends are reinvested (or are paid out in cash).
2. Dividend growth strategy isn't limited to Schwab's offering. You can find other funds that do this. But, it seems like Schwab's offerings usually have pretty low expenses, and some folks are particularly impressed by Schwab's selection of stocks. That said, it looks like you can take your pick of which ETF you like. I kind of like VDADX, although it has different characteristics. I like the composition a little better.
3. Several folks note that SCHD is sort of a 'short cut' way of hand stock picking dividend stocks. As with the bond market, buying into a etf is often going to be less profitable than hand picking, this is the usual equation of investment of time and potential payoff. I want to also note here that just because you aren't investing in SCHD, doesn't mean that you're not going to experience the effect of investment in stocks that grow their dividends, because even if you invest in a regular index fund, a significant portion of the stocks in it could very likely be \_dividend yielding stocks\_.. so, that's something to think about as well.
It seems like folks are pretty fed up with this topic on this sub, so as a final note, I hope this summary answers peoples' questions (and please correct me, or add any additional information that's missing if you have it), but since I got so much angst directed at me for posting on this topic, I wanted to suggest that maybe there be a mod post pinned to this sub with a comprehensive list of answers to hopefully reduce the amount of spam. Again, thanks for all your answer folks! Appreciate you.