WMT

In sports after a player or team scores there is a celebration. Sometimes the celebration is extreme and designed to focus attention on the individual. As a kid our coaches would say, “Act like you been there before.” The Dividend Aristocrats have been there before and they have the track record.

The 20 largest stock buybacks from the 1Q 2009 are listed below:

Learn how to determine maintenance capital expenditure to get a more accurate FCF value.
JNJ, WMT and ATW used as examples.

What do you do when the economy tanks and the stock market follows suit, but you are still generating a lot of cash? Many people would look for bargains in the market. Wal-Mart (WMT) [analysis] has done just that.

Companies have several means through which they share their prosperity with shareholders. Dividends are the portion of corporate profits paid out to stockholders in the form of cash. Share buybacks on the other hand distributes cash to existing shareholders in exchange for a fraction of the company’s outstanding equity.

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.

Jason Zweig discusses the current rally in "garbage" stocks. The article includes advice from Jeremy Grantham and also discusses the opportunities in Japanese stocks selling below net current asset value.

It is the world’s largest retailer of video game products and PC entertainment software. Yet a little something something may be needed to coax investors into the stock.

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.

Quick, who is the world’s largest exporter? China? Japan? Would you be shocked to learn it is the U.S.? Contrary to the “Made in China” stamps on clothing labels in Wal-Mart (WMT) and on the bottom of McDonald’s (MCD) Happy Meal toys, the U.S. still leads the world in exports.

Some investors lack the patience to buy a stock, hold it for one year and then receive a 3%- 5% dividend by the end of the year. They believe that in the stock market one could easily make 3%-5% every day by trading volatile stocks such as US Bancorp (USB), Citigroup (C ), Bank of America (BAC) instead.

So far in 2009, the Dividend Aristocrats have under-performed the S&P 500. However there are several dividend stocks that have done quite well and beat the S&P 500 index, and some of those companies just might surprise you!

Sequoia's (Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb) Q1 portfolio has been filed. New or increased positions include OMC, MA, BER, GOOG, KALU, MGA, KFT, GGG, CAT, VMC, AXP, WMT, BRKb, etc.

Dividend stocks have long been considered defensive stocks - those that you buy when the economy and the market go south. While everyone else is panicked about their portfolio’s decline, dividend investors see a downturn as an incredible buying opportunity.

Ackman effects change at Target. Target is now considering expanding its grocery offerings.