Good articles - Dividend Stocks: Where to Find the Best Performers

Dividend Stocks: Where to Find the Best Performers by Mark Hulbert

When it comes to dividends, more isn't always better. A company isn't necessarily more attractive just because it pays a higher dividend. That is the clear lesson I draw from the dividend-oriented newsletter with the best long-term record among the 200 services in the Hulbert Financial Digest rankings: Investment Quality Trends, edited by Kelley Wright. "Higher" or "lower" for him have meaning only when comparing a company's current dividend with what it paid in the past. He believes that comparisons with other companies are unhelpful.

Consider CVS Caremark, the drug retailer, and HCP, the health-care real-estate investment trust. Mr. Wright rates CVS Caremark more highly than HCP, even though CVS's dividend yield - the annual dividend as a percentage of the stock price - is just 1.6%, while HCP has a 4.0% yield.

Mr. Wright believes CVS is the better bet because its current yield is at the high end of the range of its past yields, which have extended from a low of 0.4% to its current at 1.6%. HCP's current yield, by contrast, is at the low end of its historical range, which has gotten as high as 12.4%. So, in terms of relative dividend yield, CVS's is higher than HCP's.

Interesting News - 04/14/2013

• Consumers show fresh caution - the latest Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan reading on consumer sentiment fell to the lowest level in nine months.
• Treasury warns Japan on Yen - The U.S. said it would closely monitor Japan's economic policies to ensure they are aimed at boosting growth, not weakening the value of the currency. The yen now is hovering near a four-year low of around 100 yen/dollar in response to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policies.
• J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo struggle - a mortgage-refinancing boom that helped fuel a surge in bank profits is fizzling, a sign of worsening health for the financial sector and the U.S. economy. The performance "underscore expectations for a slowing economy over perhaps the next couple of quarters," said bank analyst Todd Hagerman of Sterne Agee & Leach Inc. 
• Gold sinks into bear territory - many gold investors have headed for the exits in pursuit of better returns in the U.S. stock market, where benchmark indexes have hit record highs. Meanwhile, the traditional catalysts for gold prices - inflation worries and financial-market turmoil - have ebbed somewhat, further dimming gold's appeal.