Investors need a solid defense right now, says Martin Denholm. This means holding high-dividend stocks. Consumer staples and telecoms industries are the best places to cherry pick strong companies. For a lower-risk alternative, try these two high-dividend ETFs (AMEX:SDY, PEY).

What if you don't want to spend your retirement managing and worrying about your portfolio? Put it on Auto Pilot, specifically on a Dividend Investing Auto Pilot. Dividends from a quality, well-diversified portfolio are much more predictable than capital gains and best of all, they are passive.

A roundup of last week's stock related blog posts.

"Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) said Wednesday its board has approved a spinoff of the telephone company's print and online yellow pages business to stockholders as a new public company named Idearc Inc (IAR)." One share of Idearc will be distributed for every 20 shares of Verizon stock held at the close of business on November 1st. The actual spin-off is scheduled for November 17th. The spun-off business would consist of approximately "1,750 directory books, including 1,200 Verizon-branded publications with a circulation of 121 million copies".

The New York Times is reporting Verizon (VZ) is now considering a spin-off of its directories business instead of an outright sale, because it has been unable to get a private equity offer that was sufficient relative to the large tax charge such a sale would create. I've been watching this story, hoping for a spin-off, because it might create a seriously undervalued security. However, Verizon may be planning to burden the directories business with up to $9 billion in debt. As the business only had $3.4 billion in revenues and $1.03 billion in profits last year, this would be an extremely dangerous debt load for a declining business to carry.

Trent at Stock Market Beat digs deep into the accounting arcana associated with the treatment of wireless subsidiaries held by major telecom companies. After making adjustments for different accounting methods used by various telecom companies, Trent sees Verizon as a relative value bargain.