As a dividend focused stock analyst, I put less emphasis on short term share price fluctuations and more on dividend yields and dividend growth prospects. When the market turns volatile, such as what we have experienced in the last several weeks, it is good to go back to the basics of dividend investing, which for me is dividend growth. A growing payout should, over time result in a higher share price. One nice way to get a quick start to capital gains from dividend growth is to buy shares just before an announced dividend increase.

I maintain a database of about 130 REITs, which I use to track yields and dividend growth. The typical REIT increases its dividend rate once a year, at about the same time each year. Across the REIT universe, the dividend increase announcements come in almost every month of the year. Each month I like to cover the REITs on my list that have historically increased their payouts in the following month. You can use this information to establish longer term positions in stocks with growing dividends or try for the short-term capital gain that often occurs when a dividend increase is announced. Here are three potential REIT dividend increases for March.

Taubman Centers, Inc. (NYSE: TCO) acquires, develops, owns and operates regional and super-regional shopping centers. The company has grown its dividend by a 6% annual compound growth rate for the last 10 years. The payout rate was boosted by 5.0% last year. Despite a challenging retail environment in 2017, the company was able to generate growth in all its key financial metrics.

The current dividend rate is 66% of 2018’s FFO/share cash flow guidance, so a moderate dividend increase is probable to keep the growth track record going.

I forecast a 4% to 5% increase in the quarterly payout. Taubman Centers should announce the new dividend rate in early March. TCO yields 4.1%.

UDR, Inc. (NYSE: UDR) owns and operates multi-family apartment complexes. The company increased its dividend by 5.1% last year and has averaged annual dividend growth of 7.1% over the last five years. Adjusted FFO per share was up 5.5% for 2017.

Apartments have recently been viewed as a hot REIT sector that is slowing. Despite lower investor expectations, recent results from other apartment REIT have reported continued above average growth.

UDR should announce its new dividend rate in the second half of March. UDR yields 3.6%.

InfraREIT Inc. (NYSE: HIFR) is a REIT that owns electric power transmission and distribution assets in Texas. The company came to market with a January 2015 IPO. After its first year, the HIFR dividend was boosted by 11.1%. The dividend was not increased in 2017, even though revenues and cash flow were up in the high single digits.

During last year, the company ran into regulatory issues and was forced to exchange some assets. I expect the company will return to dividend growth in 2018 A high single digits dividend increase is very possible.

The next dividend announcement will be in early March, with an end of March record date and payment around April 20. HIFR currently yields 5.2%.

Last week I hosted an online session for my Dividend Hunter newsletter subscribers with InfraCap co-founders Jay Hatfield, CEO and Portfolio Manager and Edward Ryan, CFO and COO. During the hour long discussion we covered MLP investing and the changes to the high-yield InfraCap MLP ETF (NYSE: AMZA).

In January, AMZA announced a dividend policy change, going from quarterly to monthly and reducing the overall annual rate. As a result, the AMZA yield went from over 20% down to 15%. The move will benefit investors in the long term, but I wanted to get Jay and Ed in to discuss the different aspects of managing AMZA with my newsletter subscribers. The following is from my notes on the session.

The discussion started with details on valuations in the MLP space. It was shown on the presentation slides that compared to historical values the MLP yield and yield spread over BBB rated bonds are relatively high, which indicates MLPs are undervalued on historical standards.

The yield for the Alerian MLP Infrastructure Index (AMZI) is just under 8%, while REITs are yielding about 4.7% and utilities are at 4.0%. The slides on Enterprise value (EV) to EBITDA and Debt/EBITDA show that MLPs have as a group fixed their financial issues that caused business stress when energy prices crashed in 2015.

I asked Jay to discuss why he liked Energy Transfer Partners LP (NYSE: ETP) as the largest holding in the InfraCap MLP ETF (NYSE: AMZA). He discussed how ETP had become undervalued due to mechanical selling. When ETP merged with Sunoco Logistics, ETP was suddenly overweight in index tracking MLP funds. These index funds were forced to sell ETP to become balanced with the MLP indexes they are committed to mirror. Then Alerian put a 10% weighting cap on MLPs in the AMZI, and funds tracking that popular MLP index were again forced to sell ETP units to stay in line with the index weightings. The result is that Jay believes ETP with its 12% yield is very undervalued and has lots of upside potential from here.

We discussed the fact that MLP market values are highly influenced by the swings in energy commodity prices, especially crude oil. At the same time, both crude oil and natural gas production in the U.S. continue to grow.

Crude oil production growth is decreasing the need for oil imports and the increase in natural gas is being absorbed by the shift to gas to produce electricity, new chemical plants being built in the U.S. and the recent launch and growth of LNG exports. These charts show the production growth. It is this growth that produces the revenue growth for midstream MLPs. It was noted that MLPs increased distributions by 1.5% for the 2018 first quarter, which puts the sector on path for 6% annual distribution growth.

Now to the topic I think most want to hear about, the AMZA dividends. Ed and Jay discussed how during the last year, they were getting large purchases of new shares just before the ex-dividend date. As a result, they would have to immediately pay out some of the new capital as dividends. This left less capital to invest in MLPs to support the future dividends on new and existing shares.

With MLP values declining in 2017 it became very difficult to support both the dividend rate and the NAV (share value). Despite the challenges, AMZA did outperform the AMZI in 2017. The new dividend rate of $0.11 per share and monthly payment are intended to both continue to pay a very attractive yield and allow the NAV to grow.

The new dividend rate gives AMZA a 15% yield. The distributions from MLPs owned by the fund account for the first 10% and the fund’s call selling program will bring in the other 5%. Jay expressed confidence the management team could produce 5% cash flow from option selling and still grow the NAV when MLP values move higher. Ed and Jay also noted that the 5% figure will stay the same as the NAV increases. This means that if AMZA moves up to $10 or $12 per share, they will be able to generate higher cash per share from the options program. This fact plus the distribution growth in the MLP sector gives the potential for future dividend growth from AMZA. Nothing was predicted, and much is dependent on MLP values.

Taxes on dividends were discussed. Since MLP distributions are classified as non-taxable return of capital, the two-thirds of the AMZA dividend from the MLP distributions will be ROC. The one-third from the options selling program will come through as qualified dividends. Ed noted that future dividends should end up close to the two-thirds/one-third tax characteristics with the new dividend program. About taxes, Ed noted that the new tax law and lower corporate income tax rate provides a higher relative benefit to MLP funds compared to individual MLP investments.

Recent good news out of the energy sector has been masked by the stock market pullback and a not-so-great earnings report from Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM). However, beneath the noise exists some attractive total return potential for dividend investors in energy infrastructure services companies.

Here are some of the details about the current state of U.S. energy production.

• Last week the Energy Information Agency (EIA) announced the U.S. had surpassed 10 million barrels per day of crude oil production. Production had not been at the 10 million bpd level since 1970. This is double the crude production 10 years ago.
• Net imports of 2.5 million bpd are at the lowest level since 1973 and 7.5 million bpd lower than a decade ago.
• S. natural gas production has grown by 37% over the last decade. Liquid natural gas (LNG) exports started in 2016 and are rapidly ramping up.
• Polyethylene, the basic material of plastics, production uses natural gas as its raw material. Domestic and foreign chemical companies are building new polyethylene production plants in the U.S. to source inexpensive natural gas. By 2021, Texas will be the largest producer of ethylene by steam cracking in the world. Louisiana is also a hot bed for new production plants.

The growth in both upstream production and downstream demand for crude oil and natural gas puts energy midstream infrastructure companies in a very good position for growth and profits. These are the companies that provide the gathering, processing and transport of energy commodities from the production plays to the end users.

Related: Getting Paid 15% in Monthly Dividends From The Growing Energy Sector

Another beneficial change for many investors is a reduction in the use of the master limited partnership (MLP) structure by a number of energy midstream companies. The challenges of the previous three years pushed these companies back into the corporate structure. This means investors can buy higher yield energy midstream stocks and earn regular dividends. With these companies investors receive IRS Forms 1099 and not the unpopular Schedules K-1.

Here are three energy infrastructure companies that have restructured in recent years and are now poised to grow revenues, cash flow and dividends.

At the time of its 2010 IPO, Targa Resources Corp (NYSE: TRGP) owned the general partner interests in the midstream MLP, Targa Resources Partners LP (NYSE: NGLS). When energy prices crashed in 2015, the separate general partner and MLP business arrangement was an expense drag on the companies. In early 2016 TRGP completed the purchase of all NGLS units, which eliminated the general partner expenses. Currently Targa Resources operates four business units providing the following services:

• Gathering, compressing, treating, processing, and selling natural gas.
• Storing, fractionating, treating, transporting, and selling NGLs and NGL products, including services to LPG exporters.
• Gathering, storing, terminaling and selling crude oil.
• Storing, terminaling, and selling refined petroleum products.

TRGP yields 7.7% and has paid the current $0.91 per share dividend since the 2015 third quarter. I forecast that dividend growth will resume in late 2018 or early 2019.

Plains GP Holdings LP (NYSE: PAGP) was also a general partner interests company, owning GP rights from large cap MLP Plains All American Pipeline, LP (NYSE: PAA). Last year, the companies restructured, eliminating the GP interests and expenses. Now each PAGP share is backed by one PAA unit. PAA is a K-1 reporting company and PAGP reports tax info on a Form 1099. In all other respects, they are shares of the same company with the same dividend rates.

Plains owns the largest independent network of crude oil and natural gas liquids pipelines and storage facilities. The company handles more than 5 million barrels of oil per day. The dividend rate was reduced twice in the past two years as the company struggled to cope with the crash in crude oil prices. The business finances are now very secure, and I expect the dividends to start growing again in 2019. PAGP yields 5.9%.

ONEOK, Inc. (NYSE: OKE) is another former general partner company that bought in its controlled MLP, ONEOK Partners LP. ONEOK completed the roll-up transaction in June 2017. This midstream company focuses on providing natural gas infrastructure services. Operations include a 38,000-mile integrated network of NGL and natural gas pipelines, processing plants, fractionators and storage facilities in the Mid-Continent, Williston, Permian and Rocky Mountain regions.

After the ONEOK Partners merger was completed, ONEOK increased its dividend by 21%. In January this year, the company again boosted the payout, increasing the dividend by 3.4%. Company EBITDA is forecast to increase by 20% in 2018 compared to last year. Management has given dividend growth guidance of 9% to 11% per year through 2021. OKE yields 5.3%.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) has become a psychological phenomenon mostly affecting younger generations. However, FOMO has become a driving force for many investors, and it is not a plan for long term success. You can save yourself a lot of mental anguish and investment losses by sticking with a fundamentals driven dividend focused investment strategy.

Here is one definition of FOMO: ‘‘the uneasy and sometimes all-consuming feeling that you’re missing out – that your peers are doing, in the know about, or in possession of more or something better than you’’. For younger folks its this feeling that keeps them glued to their phones, constantly checking on their social media accounts. For investors, FOMO can be spotted by the habits of having one of the financial news networks running on a TV most of the day and by constantly checking brokerage account values and individual stock prices.

One sign I see from individual investors that they are in the clutches of FOMO is that each time one of their stocks drops by a few percent they must know the reason for the decline. The belief is that with a reason they will then know whether to keep the shares or sell. Since most stock market movement is not driven by actual news from the individual companies, these investors can let their fears take over and sell the stock positions for losses. The financial news puts out a lot of information that tries to explain why stock prices are moving. The explanations are just a way after the fact to try to explain the random movement of share prices in the short term. To be a successful long-term investor, it is a better practice to mostly or completely ignore the day to day news items that “experts” claim are moving the market.

To be a successful investor, instead of a short-term trader, you need to have a strategy based on the underlying fundamental financials of the companies in which you buy and own shares. There are different strategies to choose from including growth stocks where the companies are growing faster than the economy, value stocks where the market does not see the value of a company’s assets, or bets on future technologies with stocks such as Tesla or drug stock IPOs.

The strategy I employ and share with my Dividend Hunter readers is to earn dividend income from companies with stable and growing per share cash flows. I search the stock market universe for those companies whose shares have attractive yields, current dividends are well covered by free cash flow, and there is a plan or potential for continued cash flow growth.

With these companies you don’t need to check share prices every day. Once a quarter when earnings come out, you check the cash flow per share, the dividend announcement, and the income statement to see if the company is staying on plan. If that is the case, you continue to own the shares. This strategy lets you stay invested through the ups and downs of the stock market. When share prices do drop, your knowledge of the companies’ underlying financial strengths allows you to confidently purchase more shares. You get to adhere to the rarely followed investing rule to buy low and earn more dividends.

Here are two stocks that just released their 2017 earnings result that illustrate the dividend growth investing strategy.

Simon Property Group Inc. (NYSE: SPG) is an owner of Class A and outlet center type of malls. With a $51 billion market cap, SPG is the largest publicly traded REIT. When evaluating a REIT, funds from operations (FFO) is the metric the shows dividend paying ability. For 2017, Simon reported FFO of $11.21 per share. This was up 6.4% over 2016. Management provides 2018 FFO guidance of $11.96 per share at the midpoint. If guidance is met, the cash flow per share will grow by 6.7% this year. With the 2017 fourth quarter earnings, the quarterly dividend was increased by 11.4% to $1.95 per share. The annual dividend rate of $7.80 per share is handily covered by almost $12 of FFO cash flow. This is a stock that is growing free cash flow and growing the dividend. An investor just needs to check in once a quarter to make sure the numbers are on track.

On Wednesday management declared a dividend of $1.95. The payout date is February 28th with an ex-dividend date of February 13th. SPG yields 4.5%.

Eastgroup Properties (NYSE: EGP) is a $3 billion market cap industrial properties REIT. For 2017 this company saw FFO increase by 6% to $4.26 per share. Industrial properties are the commercial property segment most benefitting from the shift to e-commerce retail sales. It takes three times as much warehouse space to fulfil e-commerce orders compared to traditional brick and mortar retail warehouse needs. Eastgroup increased its dividend by 3.2% in 2017 and the current dividend rate is just 59% of FFO. The company has paid dividends for 25 consecutive years, increasing the dividend in 22 of those years. This is an income stock you can count on to pay and grow the dividends. Current yield is 2.9%.

Investors in high yield InfraCap MLP ETF (NYSE: AMZA) were shocked to get the news of a 36% dividend reduction. Fortunately, there is no reason to panic, and there are some good lessons to be learned from the past and future history of AMZA.

AMZA is an actively managed exchange traded fund that owns a portfolio of publicly traded master limited partnerships (MLPs). The MLP sector is known for high current yields. The AMZA management boosted the fund’s income with call options selling. A $0.52 per share quarterly dividend had been paid since the start of 2016. With the fund’s shares trading between $7.00 and $11.50 over the last two years, the result was a yield in the high teens to mid 20% range.

On Friday, January 19, the fund management company announced the dividend would be switched to a monthly payment of $0.11 per share. This lowers the annual dividend amount to $1.32 from the previous $2.04. This was a prudent move by management to keep the dividend stable as the fund continues to go through significant growth pains. Instead of going deeper into the reasons for the dividend change, I want to cover some lessons learned.

Lesson 1: An ETF is not a stock. I received a lot of questions asking if the AMZA share price would drop due to the dividend cut. That typically happens with a company cuts its dividend. However, as an ETF, the AMZA share price is not determined by investor sentiment. The share price is a mathematical calculation of the value of the portfolio divided by the number of shares held by investors. AMZA moves up and down generally along with the overall MLP sector. It does not matter to the share price whether the dividend has been cut.

Related: The Safe Monthly Dividend Stock to Buy and Hold Forever

Lesson 2: Compound reinvestment of a high yield security is a very powerful wealth building strategy. If you look at theis price chart showing the Alerian MLP Index and AMZA over the last two years, it looks like it would be impossible to have gains in the MLP sector over the full period. MLPs went through a steep correction to start 2016 and then a bear market that lasted most of 2017.

Yet, if you took those big dividends from AMZA and bought more shares, you would now be well ahead. Here is the math. One thousand shares purchased at the start of 2016 cost $11,200. If the dividends were reinvested at a price near the ex-dividend date price each quarter, the quarterly dividend payments would have grown from $520 paid in January 2016 to $777.92 earned in January 2018. Total dividend earnings were $5,763. Reinvesting those dividends resulted in a current total share count of 1,587. At the current share price of $8.88, those shares are worth $14,093. Through an ugly stretch for MLPs, the investment grew by 26%. At the new, lower dividend rate, the current number of shares will generate about $175 in monthly income, an 18% yield on the original investment amount.

The next step is to get a sustained uptrend from MLPs, and it looks like one started in November 2017.

Lesson 3: If you are an income investor, don’t focus on the share values in your brokerage account. Keep track of your dividend income, reinvest some or all that income and over time your income stream and account value will grow. It’s powerful math that is not obvious when you look at share prices and price charts.

AMZA has entered a new phase in its life, and I am excited to see where it goes from here. The yield is still a high 15% and the MLP sector fundamentals are the strongest they have been since 2014.

At least several times a week, I get a note from a newsletter subscriber or other investor who has heard a stock market correction or bear market is coming soon. The next statement is that the investor either plans to sell his stocks until prices drop or wait for the prices to drop before buying into any stocks. Like many commonly held beliefs about investing in stocks, this is one that is likely to cost the investor a lot of money.

Here are a couple of reasons why selling to avoid a market correction or waiting for one to buy will cost an investor money.

Reason 1: No matter what you see or read in the financial news, the next bear market does not appear to be imminent. The main reason to forecast an approaching bear market is because it has been almost nine years since the end of the last one. This logic doesn’t work because bear markets do not follow a calendar. Ten of the last 12 bears have been associated with an economic recession. The current economy gives zero indication that the next recession is on the horizon. History tells us that the economy will at some point go to negative growth, but currently there are none of the usual indicators for a pending economic downturn.

A stock market bear market is arbitrarily defined as a 20% decline from the most recent high. While the last decline of this magnitude occurred in 2008-2009, there have been several “near bear” corrections since then. Here are the three significant corrections that occurred during the current bull market:

• 2010: 16% decline
• 2011-2012: 19.4% decline
• 2015-2016: 14.3% decline

These corrections have acted as circuit breakers that keep the current market values from a place where a big drop is likely just to take off some of the froth. While it is likely that a correction will occur within the next year (they happen on average once a year), a true bear market is very unlikely.

Reason 2: History shows that getting out of the market too early costs you more than riding out corrections and bear markets. Here are some averages on the 12 bear markets since 1937.

• The average decline was 35.5%.
• Average duration from market peak to bottom of 13.8 months.
• Typical decline of about 20% in the first year.

The interesting additional data is that the two years leading up to the bear markets are, on average, the years with the biggest bull market gains. In the two years before the start of the bear markets, the S&P 500 climbed by an average 58% plus dividends. In the final year before the peaks, the average gain was 25% plus dividends. Comparing the numbers, even if you hold on through the average bear market, owning the stock averages for the two years prior to the start of the bear market leaves you with a larger portfolio value than if you had stayed out of the market and had perfect timing to get back in when the bear hit bottom. The not obvious lesson is that getting out too early can cost you more wealth than staying in through part or even all the bear market.

One feature of my dividend focused strategies is that they rule out the need to try to time when the next bear market or correction will start. I can more accurately predict dividend payments than I can swings in the stock market. My strategies focus on finding dividend stocks with a high degree of confidence in the ongoing dividend payments and buy those stocks to build a growing income stream. If the market declines into a correction or bear market, dividend earnings can be used to buy shares at lower prices boosting both the dividend stream and the capital gains when the market starts the recovery or next bull market. A dividend focused investment strategy allows you to take advantage of the proven techniques of dollar cost averaging and to buy low when fearful investors have panicked.

I recommend that income investors focus on building a portfolio of dividend stocks that balances high yield stocks with those where dividend growth is very predictable. Here are a pair of income stocks that illustrate this combination.

Hercules Capital Inc (NYSE: HTGC) is a business development company (BDC) that makes loans in in the venture capital space. Hercules client companies are growth businesses backed by venture capital investors that need additional capital to fulfil their growth and investment goals.

Loans from Hercules provide debt capital that does not dilute the equity holdings of investors and insiders. Hercules typically receives some sort of equity stake or warrant, so generates additional profits when a client company gets bought out or enters the public markets with an IPO.

This BDC has paid a steady, well covered by cash flow dividend for over five years. The shares currently yield 9.5%.

EPR Properties (NYSE: EPR) is a very well-run net lease REIT that has done a great job of growing the business and generating above average dividend growth for investors. With the net-lease (NNN) model, the tenants that lease the properties owned by EPR are responsible for all the operating costs like taxes, utilities and maintenance. EPR’s job is to collect the rent checks. Typically, NNN leases are long term, for 10 years or more, with built-in rent escalations.

EPR Properties separates itself from the rest of the triple net REIT pack by the highly focused types of properties the company owns. The EPR assets can be divided into the three categories of entertainment, comprised of movie megaplex theaters; recreation, including golf and ski facilities; and education which counts in its portfolio of properties private and charter schools, and early childhood centers.

EPR has generated superior returns for investors by growing its dividend an average of 7% per year for eight straight years. The shares yield 6.8%.