Obama and the Market

Why is it when our President speaks the market goes down? I don’t understand him at all. We help out the banks so now they are making money and paying taxes,(Which will help reduce our deficit in the long run.) so he wants to punish them for it. You can’t have it both ways. Besides we need companies creating jobs somewhere in this country. Wal-Mart and McDonalds aren’t able to employ our entire country. Also they don’t pay enough for people to live on! End of rant for today. Tony

This Week's Dividend Play

I will try to keep up with one of my new year’s goals of doing 1 post a week on this BLOG. BTW – A little disclaimer, for this BLOG, most of the Stocks I post about I already own in my personal brokerage account. This makes sense being I strongly believe in the investments I am writing about so I own them myself. I am not guaranteeing that the companies I am writing about here will make you money; IMHO they are good long term investments so I put my money where my mouth is. Today’s dividend paying long term investment is General Electric(GE). At the current price and dividend yield of 2.4% I believe it’s a long term buy and hold. Solid company that is either number 1 or 2 in almost every segment they make products in. NBC is currently having some problems but once they get them worked out the stock should move up from these levels. Last March when the market was at its lowest point my brother and I both picked up more shares around $7 a share. Now that it’s $16.50 I am very happy with that decision. Before all the worldwide recession problems the shares were in the $40 range! I believe they will be back there within 3 years plus you get the 2.4% dividend play in the mean time. Also things are improving so they will probably raise the dividend within the next year, so it’s icing on the cake. Good luck investing. Tony

Another Great Dividend Play

This post is about another great dividend play I like a lot. I am talking about Kraft Foods(KFT). This is a solid mature well run company that should be part of everyone’s long term portfolio. At the current prices the dividend yield is around 3.2%. So if the stock doesn’t move at all you are making 3.2%, not including the effects of the next time they raise it. They are the number 2 food company in the world. Being the world’s economies are still coming out of the worldwide recession this safe food company is a great conservative place to put some money. Also I believe they will be successful in acquiring Cadbury, which will give them the number one candy producing spot in the world. Again this company fits my investing philosophy of investing in what you know. I buy their products all the time being they are of a much higher quality than the store brands and most of their completion. This to me is a long term buy and forget about investment. Also no I don’t believe that buy and hold investing is dead, like many people in the industry have been saying. Thanks for reading. Tony

Invest in What You Know

When I was younger and just starting out investing I read a book about investing that really shaped my ideas. I read one of Peter Lynch’s, the famous manager of the Fidelity Magellan fund, books on being an individual investor. His biggest idea is you need to invest in what you know. (BTW – Warren Buffet has stated this himself a number of times.) I totally agree with this idea. If you can’t describe what a company does/makes in a few sentences you have no place investing in it. I understand what each company I invest in does in full. Case in point is my pick of McDonald’s(MCD), everyone knows what they do. Totally believe in them and the products they sell. The company’s long term prospects are excellent IMHO. They invest a ton of money in product development and advertising every year. In other words they re-invest in the company’s long term future every year. (Plus they reward us shareholders by raising up the dividend they pay us almost every year.) Great blue chips companies, hard to find them sometimes, like MCD is where I want my long term money to be. I will post about some other blue chip safe dividend paying stocks I like this week. Thanks for reading. Tony

Dividend Paying Stocks

I love dividend paying stocks. Why you ask? While I am waiting for the stock to reach it's true value have a steady income stream to collect in the mean time. Case in point I love AT&T(T) and Verizon(VZ) right now. Both companies are out of favor and both pay huge dividends right now. (Both around 6%!) What this means is you can hold either stock for the next 5 years and they can stay at the same price and you will collect the 6% every year! Better yet they can raise there dividend at any time. Also love McDonalds(MCD) right now. It pays a smaller, around 3% dividend, they raised it last quarter. They probably will raise it again sometime this year. These are common sense safe conservative investments. That's it for today. Tony

First Post

I am a 42 year Computer Programmer by profession. Have been an amateur stock picker/investor for 20 years. This BLOG will be about my common sense Conservative investing philosophy. I don't pretend to be an expert, so take what you read here with a grain of salt. Have done well for myself investing over the years. I will try to do a post at least once a week. That's it for now just wanted to do this post to say hi. Tony