Ian Duncan MacDonald, after he graduated from McMaster University in 1967, spent the next 38 years working as a senior executive in the commercial risk information industry. There he built decision risk systems that allowed banks, insurance companies, manufacturers and wholesalers to avoid bad loans, underwriting mistakes and account receivable losses.
Upon taking control of his retirement fund, as a self-directed investor, he soon recognized that buying stocks in financially strong companies paying high dividends was just another form of commercial risk. This inspired him, based on the commercial risk software he had previously constructed, to build stock scoring software to build and manage his large investment portfolio. His portfolio grew steadily by several multiples while supplying him with a generous, safe, reliable dividend income.
Friends, who had suffered large losses investing under the direction of investment advisors, asked him for help. He gave them his stock scoring software and spent long hours showing them how he invested. Wanting a permanent written document, they asked him to write a book that they could refer to and pass on to family and others who needed help in taking control of their retirement income.
This lead to the creation of his first investment book, "Income and Wealth From Self-Directed Investing". To address more and more new questions received from readers, he wrote more books to help them build even faster their safe portfolios of financially strong companies paying high dividends. His next books were "Safer Better Dividend Investing" "American High Dividend Handbook", "Canadian High Dividend Handbook" , "New York Stock Exchange's 106 Best High Dividend Stocks" and his last book "Canadian High Dividend Investing". Each book while different, stressed the fundamentals and included new elements to make stock selection easier.
In 2021 to help even more self-directed investors he created a weekly podcast called "Safe Dividend Investing". His podcast is now heard all over the world. In 20 minutes he will answer from 3 to 9 questions posed by investors.
Prior to writing the investment books, he had written three novels, "Duel", Using Drought USA" and "Beware the Abandoned". He is also a life -long artist with over 2,000 of his paintings, photographs and digital art on display at Fine Art America.
