Waiting for Great Companies

I always have a running list of great companies I would buy if they were priced a whole lot differently- my wish list you might say. Being value investors we all spend a lot of time trying to differentiate between garbage and gold. Usually when I am looking at a company it has hit my screens because it is suddenly cheap – my job is to find out if there is a good reason or a bad reason for this, and invest accordingly. This activity can take some time, days, sometimes even weeks. Some opportunities simply don’t last that long though, they can dry up in a matter of a day, an hour or even mere minutes.
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Interesting Links

For your 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- enjoy!

• Fear of Money
• How bubbles grow
• Bonds in Danger Zone?
• How Texas avoided the meltdown
• Mr. Distress is Ready to Buy
• A star fund manager gets cautious
• Citi to return TARP

Interesting Links

For your 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- enjoy!

• Great Chart Showing how the recession has impacted workers with differing education levels
• A dangerous omen looms for bonds
• Sony Sets Aggressive 3D goals- good investment of bust?
• Cisco oversells the hype and it costs them
• 10 Key Charts to See before you buy a home

Check your Sources

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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Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing

I had an interesting email conversation with a reader named Bill that I wanted to share. Bill is a stock broker in Oregon and has been working with the same brokerage firm for over 10 years. As I have taken several opportunities to slag their profession I was interested to hear more about his experiences. In the back and forth chat he said something that I think epitomizes my real issue with brokers.
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Why Dividend Rate Cuts Happen – Competition

In our continuing series on dividend cuts and how to avoid them, today we are going to look at what the effects that market and sector pressures have on making company’s cut dividends, and how you can train yourself to see them coming.

As we discussed previously dividend cuts can beat up your portfolio so they should be avoided at all cost. By exploring some of the main reasons that cuts happen perhaps we will better understand why they happen and how to purge these stocks before the bad news hits.
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