For your weekend reading pleasure a few interesting articles from around the globe about dividends, stocks, the market and other just plain interesting finance or economic oriented articles.
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I have written about the benefits of boring businesses in previous posts. I thought Buffett summarized some of the arguments quite well in his latest letter to shareholders:
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if you could only have four ratios to evaluate a company what would they be? This is a fun question that is popular in investing circles. For a laugh I’ll take my shot at it, what would you pick?
1) Current Ratio
Current Assets / Current Liabilities
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 I had a fellow investor tell me one day that they would never buy shares in Microsoft (MSFT) as their software is so widely pirated. I’m not a big fan of Microsoft stock but I’ve heard that reason given before and it is just silly- let me tell you how it works.
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For your reading pleasure a few interesting articles from around the globe about dividends, stocks, the economy, the market and other just plain interesting finance or economic oriented articles.
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 Before any investment in a company I try to do business as a consumer with that company. Balance sheets can only tell you so much about the “true” story of a business. When the option came up to buy a new laptop for my wife I thought, Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) stock has been interesting to me for some time, let’s give them a go.
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For your weekend reading pleasure a few interesting articles from around the globe about dividends, stocks, the market and other just plain interesting finance or economic oriented articles.
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 A recent mass layoff at my company has given me a fresh perspective on layoffs. Normally, as an investor, we see layoffs as a courageous way to drive profits forward by shaking off some areas of weakness. I have personally invested in companies shortly after a mass layoff if I believe that such changes will benefit the profitability of the business. From a purely financial perspective viewing a company as a machine is an easy thing to catch one’s self doing. However there are some soft costs involved in layoffs to a company culture that I wasn’t really aware of until the week after I witnessed fellow employees walking out the door for the last time:
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 It has become formulaic that when a movie comes out one of the advertisements will feature reviewers comments like “riveting”, or “one of the must see movies of the year” and of course my favorite “an instant classic”. The point, obviously, of these reviews is to convince you, based on some other expert’s testimony, that you need to see this movie.
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The largest struggle I have as an investor is not researching companies, or finding and analyzing data, or even pricing a stock; it is having the patience to do all of these things properly.
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 A day off from US markets is a great opportunity. With the world being what it is markets are not entirely driven by internal factors. Use your day off today to read international business news. This news can certainly give you a heads up as to what you should expect from the markets in the next day. This trick helped me immensely during the early days of the credit crunch. Bad news would break crashing out European and Asian markets while US markets were closed for holidays- guessing what the US market would do the following day?
Today is a good day to look closely at the Google vs. China story. While China’s business accounts for very little of Google’s bottom line, as the story evolves we have certainly seen market fluctuations. Maybe today is a good day to setup a buy if you have been looking for some weakness, or maybe if you think the market will overreact to Google leaving China (if stories today point that way), and today is a good time to plan your exit from Google. Your call read the news and see what you think.
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 CenturyTel, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, is an integrated communications company engaged primarily in providing an array of communications services, including local and long distance voice, Internet access and broadband services. The Company operates in 25 states located within the continental United States.
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Why We Are Reviewing
- is currently sporting an 8% dividend.
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 Having been on a recent trip to the southern US I was awestruck with the prices of property there. Being out of my element in a new city I simply wasn’t comfortable with the idea of investing though. With proper preparation trips of this type can be quite rewarding and one of your best tools is often overlooked- Google Maps.
With a simple browse of an area in Google maps you can learn all of the following:
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 I don’t mind paying taxes but if there is ever an opportunity to pay less I am certainly interested. When my wife and I bought our home we had amassed a nest egg in RSPs. We cashed in the RSP funds as part of the first time home buyer’s plan.
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I am always surprised to see the enthusiasm people exhibit when they hear that housing prices are rising, to me this is 100% bad news.
I hear remarks all the time like,
Housing prices are up 12% over last year, I am going to make a killing on this house when I sell in a year or two!
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 Reading an author ’s early writing allows us to see juvenile attempts at expressing a message more fully developed in that author’s later works. Having read through the Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis a few times, reading Benjamin Graham on Investing was an interesting opportunity to do just this.
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 I wish I had found this book years ago. Fundamental Analysis when done right requires a thorough understanding of every line item in every financial statement- what is it, what ratios use it, and most importantly, what does it tell you about the business you are trying to analyze.
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 I hate blackberry, not the company, just the device. In the world of finance and business the blackberry has become a mandatory device. While access to individuals has certainly increased as a result of this device, I am constantly challenged by the poor quality of communication one often receives when dealing with people who use them.
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 If you are fortunate enough to have a few extra dollars at the end of the month after paying your mortgage what should you do?
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Sample Mortgage Details
- 5.25%
- 25 year amortization
- $400,000 loan
- loan payments of around $2400
- our user has an extra $600 every month in free cash.
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 I make it a fairly regular habit of having a look at companies that care about their dividend. The dividend aristocrat list has always been a good starting place for me as these stocks have a proven track record of tailoring themselves to the dividend investor. Abbott Labs appears in the 2009 version of this list.
To put a full review of Abbott would make for a long post, and not a particularly interesting one, so I’ll instead restrict myself to looking at a few key elements from the company’s fundementals. Perhaps this will help to add to the research you have already performed on Abbott or suggest some alternative ways that you can look at other companies.
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 Below is our list of the top 10 ‘interesting’ insider trades for the week of 08/10/2009. These are companies that have been selected by the buyingvalue filter application. Read more about our value filters here. The companies selected are those that have cleared the first filter in the last 7 days and are the highest ranked filter 2. See here for more about the current selection criteria.
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I am a big fan of companies that make it a regular habit of dialing up a dividend. This is why I have been such a proponent of the dividend aristocrat group. Nothing perturbs me more though than to buy into a 2% dividend stock that I believe will crank up its rate only to be forced to wait multiple years before seeing that increase. To counteract this here is a simple parachute that can increase your confidence that a rate will increase. 
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