Saturday, June 29, 2013

Finding Value In The Materials Sector Is A Material Thing - Seeking Alpha

Finding Value In The Materials Sector Is A Material Thing - Seeking Alpha: Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. (More...)

This is the third in a series of articles designed to find value in today's stock market environment. However, it is the second of 10 articles covering the 10 major general sectors. In my first article, I laid the foundation that represents the two primary underlying ideas supporting the need to publish such a treatise. First and foremost, that it is not a stock market; rather it is a market of stocks. Second, that regardless of the level of the general market, there will always be overvalued, undervalued and fairly valued individual stocks to be found.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Finding Great Value In The Energy Sector - Seeking Alpha

Finding Great Value In The Energy Sector - Seeking Alpha: This will be the second in a series of articles designed to find value in today's stock market environment. However, it will be the first of 10 articles covering the 10 major general sectors. In my first article (found here), I laid the foundation that represents the two primary underlying ideas supporting the need to publish such a treatise. First and foremost, that it is not a stock market; rather it is a market of stocks. Second, that regardless of the level of the general market, there will always be overvalued, undervalued and fairly valued individual stocks to be found.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Searching For Value And Finding It In Today's Market - Sector By Sector - Seeking Alpha

Searching For Value And Finding It In Today's Market - Sector By Sector - Seeking Alpha: Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. (More...)

Introduction

"I think the market is overvalued now," is a common refrain that I'm hearing from most of the individual investors I have recently been coming in contact with. Consequently, many of these same investors are also currently eschewing investing in common stocks because of that fear. Although I do not agree that the market is currently overvalued, I believe I understand why so many people think it is. Individual investors currently believe the market is overvalued because of two common fallacies that at first blush appear to be logical.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Dividend Challengers Smackdown XXXIX - Seeking Alpha

Dividend Challengers Smackdown XXXIX - Seeking Alpha: In the most recent installments of the Smackdown series, I screened the Dividend Champions (which can be found here) by low Debt/Equity and high Return On Equity (or ROE) and, last month, by high Dividend Growth and Estimated Five-Year Earnings per Share Growth, using a 6% threshold for both.

(Note that I have separated the Champions, Contenders, and Challengers into different articles to fit more closely into the format preferred by Seeking Alpha. Champions are companies that have paid higher dividends for at least 25 straight years; Contenders have streaks of 10-24 years; Challengers have streaks of five to nine years. "CCC" refers to the combination of all three groups. I use the same Roman numeral for all three articles.)

Dividend Champions Smackdown XXXIX - Seeking Alpha

Dividend Champions Smackdown XXXIX - Seeking Alpha: In the most recent installments of the Smackdown series, I screened the Dividend Champions (which can be found here) by low Debt/Equity and high Return On Equity (or ROE) and, last month, by high Dividend Growth and Estimated Five-year Earnings per Share Growth, using a 6% threshold for both.

(Note that I have separated the Champions, Contenders, and Challengers into different articles to fit more closely into the format preferred by Seeking Alpha. Champions are companies that have paid higher dividends for at least 25 straight years; Contenders have streaks of 10-24 years; Challengers have streaks of five to nine years. "CCC" refers to the combination of all three groups. I use the same Roman numeral for all three articles.)

Dividend Contenders Smackdown XXXIX - Seeking Alpha

Dividend Contenders Smackdown XXXIX - Seeking Alpha: In the most recent installments of the Smackdown series, I screened the Dividend Champions (which can be found here ) by low debt/equity and high return on equity (or ROE) and, last month, by high dividend growth and estimated five-year earnings per share growth, using a 6% threshold for both.

(Note that I have separated the Champions, Contenders, and Challengers into different articles to fit more closely into the format preferred by Seeking Alpha. Champions are companies that have paid higher dividends for at least 25 straight years; Contenders have streaks of 10-24 years; Challengers have streaks of five to nine years. "CCC" refers to the combination of all three groups. I use the same Roman numeral for all three articles.)

Friday, June 7, 2013

Own These World's Leading Brands And Never Fear A Recession Again - Seeking Alpha

Own These World's Leading Brands And Never Fear A Recession Again - Seeking Alpha: Introduction - The Volatility Is Risk Myth

If you were to take the essence of most people's beliefs and understanding about investing in common stocks, or the stock market for that matter, and turn it into a movie, I believe it would have to be labeled under the category science fiction. In other words, in my experience, most of what people believe about common stocks or the stock market is predicated more on opinion than on fact. But even more importantly, it is predicated on opinions that are driven by strong emotional responses. Consequently, I believe that what most people feel that they know about investing in stocks is based more on myth than truth.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Happy Birthday! The Dividend Growth Portfolio Turns 5 - Seeking Alpha

Happy Birthday! The Dividend Growth Portfolio Turns 5 - Seeking Alpha: Five years ago, on June 1, 2008, I established a demonstration and teaching device: The Dividend Growth Portfolio [DGP]. Last Friday, it celebrated its 5th birthday.

In 2008, I wanted to have a real-life, real-time, real-money portfolio to demonstrate what could be accomplished with a dividend growth strategy-without trickery, cherry picking, back-testing, or hindsight. So I converted an existing portfolio at E-Trade into the DGP. I emptied the old portfolio of stuff that did not fit and bought stocks that did fit the dividend growth strategy

Dividend Champions For June 2013 - Seeking Alpha

Dividend Champions For June 2013 - Seeking Alpha: The Dividend Champions spreadsheet and PDF have been updated through 5/31/13 and are available at http://dripinvesting.org/Tools/Tools.asp. Note that all references to Champions mean companies that have paid higher dividends for at least 25 straight years; Contenders have streaks of 10-24 years; Challengers have streaks of 5-9 years. "CCC" refers to the universe of Champions, Contenders, and Challengers.