Stock Market

Investing in companies that pay dividends to shareholders is a common way to generate steady, reliable income from your investment portfolio. However, not every stock that pays a dividend is the same, so it’s important to understand how dividends work and what differentiates dividend investments before you dive in. If you’re interested in committing a part of your portfolio to dividend investing, this article will cover everything you need to know to get started. What is a Dividend? A dividend is a payment issued to qualified shareholders from a company’s profits. Most often, dividends take the form of cash payments, although they can also be issued in the form of stock or company products. Ultimately, dividends are another way that companies can offer returns to shareholders beyond just...

Investment Thesis So you have decided that you would like to have an allocation to real estate in your investment portfolio. Great idea! Real estate investing has probably created more millionaires than any other type of investment. It makes sense for most investors to include an allocation to real estate as part of a diversified portfolio. But how to invest in real estate? That is the question to ask. For most people, investing in real estate necessarily refers to direct ownership of a plot (or multiple plots) of land, on which sit improvements such as a house or commercial building that are leased out to tenants. These investors may or may not be aware of real estate investment trusts ("REITs") — publicly traded vehicles that basically amount to real estate mutual funds, owning...

Introduction Followers of my articles are aware that we planned to retire in July of this year at the age of 54. Our original intent was to not use any of our tax-deferred retirement accounts until we were 59-1/2. However, we had to change the plan due to uncertainty of the future of the Affordable Care Act. A federal judge ruled the law unconstitutional in December 2018. To plan for the potential disappearance of the healthcare exchange and associated benefits, we need to get access to some of our IRA funds. We created a 72(T) withdraw plan from one of our IRAs in January of this year. An additional benefit of this was that it allowed us to retire in March of this year instead of July. So retire in March we did. We retired on a Friday to start our “Motorhome Retirement,” and the Unit...

A classic 2000 film, Boiler Room, details life at a brokerage offering the opportunity for its trainees to become 'overnight millionaires'. Seth joins the firm as a trainee, and learns that the business isn't as pretty as he expected. Cold-calling quickly becomes his new best friend, offering shares to unsuspecting and unknowing 'customers' on the promise that the price will only rise and rise, and that they're in the 'next big thing' before anyone else. It's not long before Seth starts to see the inner workings of J.T. Marlin - and the details of the 'pump-and-dump' scheme. Brokers and trainees would be promoting: fake, expired and/or worthless (penny) stocks, yet claiming to their 'customers' that those investments were guaranteed to go up and make them rich; after that demand drives ...

“"We are asking everybody, when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask," Trump said. “Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact." The US has learned "a great deal" about "the China virus", and unfortunately, things will probably "get worse before they get better" Trump said. “Some areas of our country are doing very well, others are doing less well,” the President said. “It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better. Something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is.” Yes, that's the way it is.   It's also the way it was in February, March, April, May and June but better late than never, on July 21st, in taking the most simple precaution against the rampant spread of a virus that has now killed 14...

Listen on the go! Subscribe to The Cannabis Investing Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. By Rena Sherbill Ted Waller is a private investor and esteemed Seeking Alpha contributor who has over 50 years of investing experience. His focus is on deep value and low risk and shares his thoughts with us on his favorite cannabis stocks, why he got into the space, what to look for in the sector, trends he favors and that nagging investor dilemma - when to pull the trigger on a stock? Topics include: 7:30 - Ted has 50 years of investment experience, started with GTE as a teenager, at the time the second largest phone company in the US, with money from his paper route and lost money. Learned that recommendations don't count for m...

On Tuesday, Synchrony Financial (SYF) reported financial results that should alleviate investor concern about its ability to withstand the current economic downturn; in fact, shares finished 1% higher. As one of the nation’s leading credit card lenders, SYF is directly exposed to consumer credit, particularly given its focus on low-prime and subprime borrowers. Undoubtedly, the company will see a rise in defaults and delinquencies due to the recession and increased joblessness. However, thanks to federal stimulus efforts, it may not be as bad as feared, and shares remain attractive, in my view. In the company’s second quarter, SYF managed to eke out a small profit despite increasing reserves against future credit losses substantially. The company’s non-GAAP EPS of $0.69 was $0.49 ahead ...

Half of the independent Canadian restaurants recently surveyed say that they are unlikely to survive the current crisis. This is bad news for small business owners in the sector, as well as related lenders, employees, landlords, economic growth and tax collection. A similar trend is evident in the American data and surveys as shown in the chart below courtesy of Yelp. Forty-one percent of business closures in the household service and retail space since March 1 have been noted as permanent, led by 53% of restaurants. But there is also a positive side to this story for households. The explosion in eating out and prepared food consumption over the past 15 years helped to drive a pandemic of debt and food-related illness throughout North America. This has come at a heavy cost to famil...

Nextech AR Solutions (OTCQB:NEXCF) (CN:NTAR) is a Canadian company that provides augmented reality ("AR") solutions for ecommerce and virtual events. This article comes a week after my initial bullish article was published. I believe that the sell- off over the past two sessions is overdone and creates a good buying opportunity. It's not just that if I like it at a higher price I must love it at this lower price. First of all, the stock price was due for some profit taking due to the huge run up and most importantly, I think that none of the basis for bashing this stock, other than the heavy promoting, has any validity. It's not my intent or purpose to address point for point the allegations made in the short thesis article, but I would like to update my bullish position and address w...

Introduction Clorox (NYSE:CLX) beat their Q3 earnings forecast handily back on May 1st and are certainly going to repeat this performance again with Q4. In the age of Covid and sheltering in place, May 1st feels like it was years ago and the amount of uncertainty surrounding the economy, corporate operations, and literally everything was extremely high. Management's conservatism made sense back then, but with the benefit of hindsight we can now reasonably forecast where the numbers landed for Calendar Q2 (Fiscal Q4). Normally, I publish earnings previews a few days before the release, and generally put a position on at that time. Given the price action of Clorox in recent weeks, my read is that there is a non-trivial earnings 'frontrun' going on, so I've decided to initiate my long po...