If you’d invested $100,000 in the S&P 500 back in 1982, it would have been worth $2.3 million by the end of 2011. If you would have invested that same amount in dividend payers, you’d have $4.3 million.  Not bad. And that’s where most investors stop.  But if you’d invested the same amount of cash using a simple strategy that too many investors often ignore, then it would have been worth $6.7 million. Seem too good to be true? It’s not.  #-ad_banner-#Many investors searching for the best total returns will simply look for high-yielding stocks. But dividends don’t… Read More

If you’d invested $100,000 in the S&P 500 back in 1982, it would have been worth $2.3 million by the end of 2011. If you would have invested that same amount in dividend payers, you’d have $4.3 million.  Not bad. And that’s where most investors stop.  But if you’d invested the same amount of cash using a simple strategy that too many investors often ignore, then it would have been worth $6.7 million. Seem too good to be true? It’s not.  #-ad_banner-#Many investors searching for the best total returns will simply look for high-yielding stocks. But dividends don’t tell the whole story — not even half of it. If you’re looking for more cash from your investments, you should be looking at all of the ways a company distributes its cash.  Don’t get me wrong — dividends can be a great indicator of company health. From 1972 through 2011, members of the S&P that don’t pay dividends returned just 1.4% per year, turning a $1,000 investment into just $1,710 according to research by Ned Davis. Meanwhile, companies that pay dividends returned 8.6% annually — significantly more than those that did not. Dividends are obviously a key ingredient to… Read More

Right now you can earn big, double-digit “Instant Yields” from some of the safest stocks in the world. For example, we’ve found yields as high as 17.4% from Kraft Foods (Nasdaq: KFT)… 17.0% from Disney (NYSE: DIS)… and even as much as 18.1% from tech giant Intel (Nasdaq: INTC). #-ad_banner-#This isn’t some investment gimmick, either. The payouts I’m talking about are settled in cash. That is, every time you get one of these payments, the money is added to your brokerage account almost instantly. Take a gander at the incredible yields we’re finding from some of the market’s best-known stocks…… Read More

Right now you can earn big, double-digit “Instant Yields” from some of the safest stocks in the world. For example, we’ve found yields as high as 17.4% from Kraft Foods (Nasdaq: KFT)… 17.0% from Disney (NYSE: DIS)… and even as much as 18.1% from tech giant Intel (Nasdaq: INTC). #-ad_banner-#This isn’t some investment gimmick, either. The payouts I’m talking about are settled in cash. That is, every time you get one of these payments, the money is added to your brokerage account almost instantly. Take a gander at the incredible yields we’re finding from some of the market’s best-known stocks… At first glance, these payouts may seem impossible. After all, a quick look at Yahoo Finance tells us that none of these stocks pay more than 3.5% a year. So how are investors earning so much income from giant brand name stocks like Kraft Foods, Disney and Intel? It’s easy. They’re selling covered calls. On the surface, selling covered calls seems like a complex concept. It involves options, an investing tool most investors don’t know much about to begin with. But used properly, selling covered calls can be one of the market’s most lucrative investment strategies — especially… Read More

There’s nothing like not getting your package delivered in time for Christmas.#-ad_banner-#​ This happened to a number of consumers this holiday season. The online retailers blamed the major shipping companies. The shipping companies blamed the online retailers. Customers were outraged. They took to social media, calling out both online retailers and the major delivery companies. Surprisingly, the market stood by the shipping stocks and none took a major hit on the negative news. Investors should take this as a sign of confidence. FedEx (NYSE: FDX) was one of the companies at the center of the… Read More

There’s nothing like not getting your package delivered in time for Christmas.#-ad_banner-#​ This happened to a number of consumers this holiday season. The online retailers blamed the major shipping companies. The shipping companies blamed the online retailers. Customers were outraged. They took to social media, calling out both online retailers and the major delivery companies. Surprisingly, the market stood by the shipping stocks and none took a major hit on the negative news. Investors should take this as a sign of confidence. FedEx (NYSE: FDX) was one of the companies at the center of the ruined package delivery debacle, but investors shouldn’t let their holiday mishaps interfere with their investing. Gearing Up For 2014 The short Thanksgiving-to-Christmas timeframe and an overwhelming number of e-commerce purchases showed just how unprepared the major shippers were. FedEx has been throwing money into its infrastructure and will be more than prepared for the steady rise in e-commerce next holiday season. FedEx will have three to five new hubs available for ground delivery next holiday season. The fact remains that as retailers battle for customers, the one sure winner will be shippers like FedEx.  In the eyes of the… Read More

The covered call strategy can be a very lucrative approach to investing, especially during periods of uncertainty, when most traders are lucky to simply maintain their capital base.#-ad_banner-# As a brief overview, this strategy includes buying a stock and then selling call options against the position. For selling the call option contract, we collect a premium, and in return, become obligated to sell our stock at the option’s strike price, assuming the market price is above that level before… Read More

The covered call strategy can be a very lucrative approach to investing, especially during periods of uncertainty, when most traders are lucky to simply maintain their capital base.#-ad_banner-# As a brief overview, this strategy includes buying a stock and then selling call options against the position. For selling the call option contract, we collect a premium, and in return, become obligated to sell our stock at the option’s strike price, assuming the market price is above that level before the option expires. As a general rule, I prefer to set up covered call trades that will expire in four to eight weeks. This allows us to sell calls at an attractive price and still close out our trades for profits relatively quickly. Typically, we can expect to book a profit of 3% to 5% over the time period, which means that our per-year returns are in the neighborhood of 25% to 35%. Dividends Add Firepower To A Covered Call Strategy Covered call trades are powerful enough on their own. But when you add in the extra income from… Read More

There are overreactions in the stock market all the time, leading to mispriced securities. This happens as investors tend to overreact to news or earnings. Almost no company is immune.#-ad_banner-#​ Unjustified downward pressure can even happen to companies that offer products that touch every aspect of our lives. One thing that investors should remember is that these are usually near term pressures and can make for great buying opportunities. This is especially true if there is a long-term growth story is intact.  One recent example is blue-chip retailer Target (NYSE: TGT), which said last month… Read More

There are overreactions in the stock market all the time, leading to mispriced securities. This happens as investors tend to overreact to news or earnings. Almost no company is immune.#-ad_banner-#​ Unjustified downward pressure can even happen to companies that offer products that touch every aspect of our lives. One thing that investors should remember is that these are usually near term pressures and can make for great buying opportunities. This is especially true if there is a long-term growth story is intact.  One recent example is blue-chip retailer Target (NYSE: TGT), which said last month that it had sustained a security breach of customer account info. The news continued to get worse for the stock as Target disclosed last week that additional info — including phone numbers and street and email addresses — might have been compromised. As a result, the company lowered its earnings outlook for its fiscal fourth quarter due to notably lower store traffic and sales stemming from news of the data breach. However, the recent headlines are overshadowing the long-term potential for the stock. Yes, some 40 million credit and debit card accounts were breached, but Target doesn’t think PINs were… Read More

It’s a country that rarely gets any mention by the mainstream financial media. Sure, you hear about India, China, Russia, and Brazil. And for good reason — those countries are growing at incredible rates, which has made many investors rich already… and will make even more people wealthy in the years ahead. But for my money, I don’t know if there is a better place to invest than Chile. #-ad_banner-#It’s small — its total GDP is roughly $325.8 billion. That’s about 50 times smaller than the United States’ economy. Meanwhile, only 17.2 million people call Chile home… giving it a… Read More

It’s a country that rarely gets any mention by the mainstream financial media. Sure, you hear about India, China, Russia, and Brazil. And for good reason — those countries are growing at incredible rates, which has made many investors rich already… and will make even more people wealthy in the years ahead. But for my money, I don’t know if there is a better place to invest than Chile. #-ad_banner-#It’s small — its total GDP is roughly $325.8 billion. That’s about 50 times smaller than the United States’ economy. Meanwhile, only 17.2 million people call Chile home… giving it a smaller population than Florida. Right now, Chile’s economy is growing at a 4.7% annual rate — more than twice as fast the United States. That growth is accompanied by perhaps the most fiscally conservative government on the planet. National debt in the United States sits at 70% of GDP according to the CIA World Factbook. But Chile’s public debt totals just 12% of GDP. In fact, it is required by law to run a budget surplus unless there are extreme circumstances. In 2012, it ran a surplus of 0.5%. For comparison, the United States ran a deficit of nearly 7%… Read More

What do you call 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day for the next 20 years? If you’re a big pharmaceutical company, you might call it an ATM.#-ad_banner-# Investors got a taste of this in the late ’90s when drugmaker Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) introduced the erectile dysfunction wonder drug Viagra. Money was made as competitors came out with “me too” products, and Big Pharma threw itself into R&D for products tailored to serve this huge (65 million-plus) and aging market.  However, after a rally at the end of the 20th century, pharma stocks came back to earth with… Read More

What do you call 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day for the next 20 years? If you’re a big pharmaceutical company, you might call it an ATM.#-ad_banner-# Investors got a taste of this in the late ’90s when drugmaker Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) introduced the erectile dysfunction wonder drug Viagra. Money was made as competitors came out with “me too” products, and Big Pharma threw itself into R&D for products tailored to serve this huge (65 million-plus) and aging market.  However, after a rally at the end of the 20th century, pharma stocks came back to earth with the rest of the market and spent almost a decade chugging sideways. But as markets crawled out of the wreckage of the financial crisis, pharma stocks have quietly broken out and moved higher. Five years ago, I began including shares of Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) in my clients’ equity portfolios. At the time, the meat-and-potatoes metrics of the stock were impressive: single-digit trailing and forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios, a dividend yield over 5%, a mountain of cash, skilled and committed management, and a full, promising new product pipeline — which is the difference between life and death in the pharma… Read More

Who doesn’t love to indulge with a sweet treat every now and then? (Especially when it’s chocolate…) #-ad_banner-#​ The likes of Oreos, Nabisco cookies and Cadbury chocolates are great places to start. To the rest of the world, these decadent goodies are foreign concepts — but rising middle classes in emerging markets means these items are increasingly being made available to the masses. Meanwhile, snacks continue to be a staple in developed markets despite the rise in health consciousness.  The best way to play the expanding emerging market wallet and global snack demand is Mondelez International (Nasdaq: MDLZ). With… Read More

Who doesn’t love to indulge with a sweet treat every now and then? (Especially when it’s chocolate…) #-ad_banner-#​ The likes of Oreos, Nabisco cookies and Cadbury chocolates are great places to start. To the rest of the world, these decadent goodies are foreign concepts — but rising middle classes in emerging markets means these items are increasingly being made available to the masses. Meanwhile, snacks continue to be a staple in developed markets despite the rise in health consciousness.  The best way to play the expanding emerging market wallet and global snack demand is Mondelez International (Nasdaq: MDLZ). With revenue of more than $35 billion last year, Mondelez is the maker of those Oreos, Nabisco cookies and Cadbury chocolates that U.S. consumers love so much — but it also makes various other snacks and beverages, including Lu biscuits, Trident gums, Jacobs coffee and Tang drink powder. Mondelez is the international business that was left after Kraft Foods (Nasdaq: KRFT) spun off its North American grocery business in 2012. The company sells nearly 60 brands in more than 165 countries. According to Forbes, the Mondelez brand is among the 50 most powerful in the world.  The rapid rise of China’s… Read More

In my look last summer at what makes for a great brand, I alerted StreetAuthority readers to a rapidly growing, dividend-paying company that happens to be steeped in American legend and lore.#-ad_banner-#​ Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, actors Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, and the outlaw motorcycle club Hells Angels have all had a part in building the powerful mythos around this company — one that has translated into massive profits for its investors. When that article was published Aug. 1, this stock was trading around $57. Since that time, it has surpassed my… Read More

In my look last summer at what makes for a great brand, I alerted StreetAuthority readers to a rapidly growing, dividend-paying company that happens to be steeped in American legend and lore.#-ad_banner-#​ Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, actors Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, and the outlaw motorcycle club Hells Angels have all had a part in building the powerful mythos around this company — one that has translated into massive profits for its investors. When that article was published Aug. 1, this stock was trading around $57. Since that time, it has surpassed my target price, soaring close to 20% to a 52-week high near $70 in less than six months. Fortunately, it’s not too late to capture additional upside in this 110-year-old company.  This company is continuing to post fantastic numbers, pays an unswerving dividend and participates in an aggressive share buyback program — not to mention the fanatical loyalty it inspires in its customers. If you haven’t guessed, I’m talking about Harley-Davidson (NYSE: HOG). The famed motorcycle company posted a blowout third quarter with a nearly 24% increase in diluted earnings per share and U.S. motorcycle sales revving up more than 20%… Read More

It boggles my mind to think about how many billions of casseroles have been made by American moms and eaten by eye-rolling American kids over the past century. #-ad_banner-# That’s a weird thing to obsess about, I know — but it’s not really the casseroles I’m thinking about. It’s the casserole dishes and, most likely, many of those glass dishes were manufactured by Corning (NYSE: GLW). Throughout its long history — it was founded in 1851 — Corning has made glass for lots of different things. But during the tech boom of the late 20th century, this old-line American… Read More

It boggles my mind to think about how many billions of casseroles have been made by American moms and eaten by eye-rolling American kids over the past century. #-ad_banner-# That’s a weird thing to obsess about, I know — but it’s not really the casseroles I’m thinking about. It’s the casserole dishes and, most likely, many of those glass dishes were manufactured by Corning (NYSE: GLW). Throughout its long history — it was founded in 1851 — Corning has made glass for lots of different things. But during the tech boom of the late 20th century, this old-line American industrial company reinvented itself as a cutting-edge technology company making fiber-optic cable for the information superhighway.  Then the bottom fell out: GLW was pretty much hung out to dry by the market as investors realized that, in typical American fashion, telecom providers had gotten ahead of themselves and overbuilt their fiber-optic networks. “There’s no way Corning will ever make money again,” said the skeptics. Then Corning reinvented itself again, thanks to smartphones and tablets — with a product they had developed called Gorilla Glass, which turned out to be perfect for these devices. I last profiled Corning in… Read More