Chasing dividend-paying stocks makes no more sense than chasing a typical growth stock. The best way to build wealth is to buy high-quality businesses below value-based targets and hold these stocks for the long term.

"Buy and hold" is still the best way to build wealth, no matter what unexpectedly flies or floats our way.

Momentum investors are attracted to our solid, dividend-paying stocks right now, which makes for some volatile trading days. Over the long term our picks' ability to build wealth will transcend the current mania.

A strong business is the best predictor of stock performance: Keep this in mind throughout 2012 as we encounter the same levels of investor panic that defined 2011.

On one hand we have solid businesses respected broadly as potential safe havens in times of turmoil. On the other are companies that are similarly stable operationally but haven’t established enough credibility with investors. Therein lay potential opportunities.

We’re deep into 2011, still with a shot at posting a third straight year of double-digit returns. But the clock doesn’t stop on Dec. 31.

Dividends paid by How They Rate companies were remarkably stable even as the market crashed in 2008, and their stock prices were among the first to bounce back once the market regained its footing.

With expectations lower than they’ve been since 2009 but businesses primed with ample low-cost capital, the pieces are in place for an end-of-year rally that could lead to another double-digit total return year for the Canadian Edge Portfolio.

This dramatic selloff is likely to be what those that have come before have been: a great opportunity to lock in high yields paid by otherwise solid operating companies.