Research Articles

10 High Yield REITs: Do the Yields Justify the Risk?

When I first entered the investment business, a mentor taught me that there were really only two ways that an investor could position their portfolios; they could either act as owners or they could act as loaners. Owners typically invested in equities and were therefore owners of the underlying asset class they invested in. Loaners, …

Why Buy and Hold Will Always Be a Sound Investing Strategy

It seems like the debate regarding the merits of the “buy-and-hold” investing strategy is alive and well. We always find these discussions amusing, because we believe that it is such a pointless discussion. There is no general argument or case that can be made to support the buy-and-hold strategy or to negate it. The only …

Costco vs. Wal-Mart: Who Wins the Stock Price Wars?

Headquartered in Issaquah, Washington, Costco (COST) reported fiscal year fourth quarter earnings Wednesday that beat street estimates only to see its shares slide. Although earnings were two cents better than estimated, revenues came in a little short. So far, the media is attributing Wednesday’s stock slide to the revenue miss and slightly slower September sales …

Ten Prominent Defense Stocks That Pay Dividends, Part II

Introduction In Part I of this two-part series we pointed out how proposed spending cuts by Defense Secretary Robert Gates are designed to hold the growth of the $680 billion defense department budget to only 1% or 2% for the next few years. We further pointed out that these pending spending cuts were casting a …

VF Corporation: Attractive Valuation With a Growing Dividend

Introduction and History VF Corporation (VFC) is the world’s largest apparel company with solid brands that are sold in more than 150 countries throughout the world. The company traces its roots back to 1899 when eight men formed the Reading Glove and Mitten manufacturing company in Reading, Pennsylvania. In 1911 one of the eight men, …

S&P 500: A 20% rise in 2010?

The Stock Market – Wisdom via Ben Graham One of my favorite Ben Graham stories is one I cannot substantiate to be true. Nevertheless, it’s a terrific story which I believe contains great investing wisdom. It was alleged that a young zealous reporter was dogging Ben Graham for an interview. Not one to seek the …

S&P 500: Modestly Overvalued

After a strong price recovery in 2009, the question on every investor’s mind is what about 2010? To us, it’s always a function of valuation based on earnings. In fact, the correlation between earnings and price explains a lot about past, present and ultimately future performance. This is true for individual companies, but applies to …