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How can one protect oneself from a dividend stock with decreasing price?
Your question reminds me of a Will Rogers quote: buy some good stock, and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it. There's no way to prevent yourself from buying a stock that goes down.  In fact all stocks go down at some times.  The way to protect your long term investment is to diversify, which increases the chances that you have more stocks that go up than go down.  So many advisors will encourage index funds, which have a low cost (which eats away at returns) and low rick (because of diversification).  If you want to experiment with your criteria that's great, and I wish you luck, but  Note that historically, very few managed funds (meaning funds that actively buy and sell stocks based on some set of criteria) outperform the market over long periods.  So don't be afraid of some of your stocks losing - if you diversify enough, then statistically you should have more winners than losers. It's like playing blackjack.  The goal is not to win every hand. The goal is to have more winning hands than losing hands.