This is Motley Fool Answers. I'm Alison Southwick and I'm joined as always by Robert Roe Camp,

personal finance expert here at the Motley Fool. Hey, bro. How you doing?

I am so good. How are you, Alison?

I'm doing okay. In this week's episode, we're going to talk about privacy, recent privacy concerns

and stories in the headlines,

as well as talk about some of the most popular scams that are flying around the internet amidst the coronavirus.

If you were interested in doing some scams, here are some ideas.

All that and more on this week's episode of Molly Fool Answers.

So, bro, what's up? Oh, you know, about three things.

Yes, three things.

Three that I'll bring up.

So number one, the doggishness of dividends.

So as we all know, the return from the stock market comes from two components, capital gains and dividends. Now, we have no

idea what kind of gains or losses. We'll see from our investments from one year or the next,

but dividends, man, they are remarkably reliable. Since the S&P 500 became an official index in

1958, there have only been eight years in which the dividends paid by the companies declined

from one year to the next.

And only two of those years were the declines above 3.3%. So in 1959, they declined 13%. And in 2009,

they declined 21%. 2009, by the way, it was like the worst year for dividends. So how have dividends

fared this year, at least so far, and where might they end up

at the end of 2020? Well, Standard and Poor's very conveniently released a recent article on that

very topic written by Howard Silverblatt, who's kind of like one of their head honchos in their

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