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.

As an investor in the accumulation stage, I tend to focus on companies with yields of at least 3% and expectations of future dividend growth. Most of these companies have a history of consistent annual dividend increases which exceeds ten years.

As summer turns to fall and the heat begins to moderate, winter and its freezing temperatures are just around the corner. However, some companies have been frozen in place for the last year; more specifically, their dividends have been frozen at the same rate for more than a year.

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) just posted its 13-F filing with the SEC, which lists changes in its stock positions.

There are several stocks, which offer tempting current high yields, which are less likely to be sustained. Most of the companies mentioned below are members of the elite S&P Dividend Aristocrats index for now.

Some of my fellow dividend investors have accused Warren Buffett of being a closet dividend investor. I won’t quite go that far, but there is significant common ground between dividend and value investors. With that said, let’s take a close look at Mr. Buffett’s most recent 13-F filing with the SEC.

As a dividend growth investor, my goal is to generate a rising stream of dividend income. Thus I would have to be selective not only about picking individual stocks, but also about selecting companies from a variety of industries, countries and size, in order to avoid a widespread implosion in overall dividend income.

One of my main objectives as a dividend growth investor is to seek investments which have a strong business model that throws out enough cash flow that could support consistent dividend increases.

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%.

When things are good your a Hero, when things go sour everyone turns their back and finds more dirt...

When I add a stock to my dividend portfolio, it is my intention to hold the stock forever. However, sometimes selling a stock is the right thing to do. I always sell after a dividend cut, but should I sell a dividend stock after a dividend freeze?

A look at the third quarter changes made by Warren Buffett in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio.

Out of 38 holdings in BRK-A’s portfolio 12 companies are dividend aristocrats, one is a dividend champion and three are dividend achievers. Only 5 of his holdings do not play any dividends at all.

Warren Buffett, the student of the now famous father or value investing Ben Graham, is the greatest stock investor of our times. He has built his flagship company, Berkshire Hathaway from a small mill to a diversified conglomerate with a total market cap of 175 billion dollars.