Value Investing News

The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats is the most prestigious list of dividend stocks. It is designed to measure the performance of S&P 500 stocks that have followed a policy of consistently increasing dividends every year for at least 25 consecutive years.

Most companies use debt for a variety of reasons in their operations. It could be either short term or long-term obligations. If there’s anything the 2007-2009 financial crisis has taught us, it is that excessively leveraged companies could easily blow up after a chain of negative events. Thus it pays to know what the debt situation for a particular company you are investing in actually is.

The financial crisis lead to dividend cuts amongst several prominent dividend payers such as Bank of America (BAC), US Bancorp (USB) and BB&T Corp. (BBT). Over the past few weeks however, several financial companies announced that they might reconsider their current dividend policies and start raising distributions in the near future.

Despite Avery Dennison's recent dividend cut,the dividend aristocrats index appears to be business as usual in 2009.The dividend aristocrats represent S&P 500 members which have consistently raised their dividends for more than 25 consecutive years. At the end of 2008, there were 52 constituents in the index.

Avery Dennison (AVY) just declared a quarterly dividend of 0.20/share, which represents a 50% decrease from last quarter’s payment of 0.41/share. The company reduced its dividend to support debt reduction efforts. The company also reported $0.56 in 2Q earnings per share, which didn’t provide sufficient coverage for the dividend.

Have you ever read something then paused and said well that’s stating the obvious? Then upon further reflection realize what is obvious to you may not be obvious to others. This happened to me recently as I was scanning some retirement headlines.

A visual analysis of the banks that were recently run through the stress test. Hat tip: Simoleon Sense

The number of dividend cuts in the S&P Dividend Aristocrats index increased to seven, as two more financial stocks cut their dividends in May.

Several banks have learned the hard way that when you get the U.S. government’s money, even in the form of a loan, as a bonus you get the government’s “help” running your business. So what’s a company to do when they realize they’re in a bad relationship?

BB&T (BBT) and Legg Mason(LM) are the latest financial stock to drastically cut dividends . This didn’t shock anyone, as the financial sector has received a pretty bad reputation for its enormous losses and massive dividend cuts.

S&P 500, which is the benchmark against which most money managers track their performance, lost 11.67% in the first quarter of 2009. The S&P Dividend Aristocrats however underperformed the benchmark by almost 2% after losing 13.84% in the first quarter. Now if we add dividends to the picture the S&P 500 loss drops to 11.01% while the loss for Dividend Aristocrats decreases to 12.90%.

Trust preferreds are subordinated debt, and stand to benefit from government putting money into banks at the equity level. This could be an excellent risk/reward opportunity for investors looking for yield.

When the government wants to spend pork, but not call it pork they rebrand it as an "investment" in our future. Such is the case with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). So, as taxpayers and "investors" how have we fared with our "investment" and how does TARP fit into our dividend portfolios?

The American Banking landscape is under change. As the financial crisis heated up in 2008 we saw many companies loose billions of dollars and some even...

TARP allows the United States Department of the Treasury to purchase nonliquid, difficult to value assets from banks and other financial institutions. TARP also allow the Treasury to purchase whole loans and make direct equity investments in banks themselves.