With interest rates so low and destined to go up, I'm wary of putting too much money in bond funds. As an alternative, I'm thinking of mutual funds that invest in dividend-paying stocks, particularly ones that consistently raise their dividends. My question: should I count the dividend stock funds as part of my stock allocation or my bond allocation? -- Ron
With long-term bond yields still hovering around a piddling 2%, it is no surprise that many investors are hungry for stocks that offer juicy dividends.
Chaotic markets have left investors scrambling for ways to boost returns without taking on excessive risk. But there's a simple strategy that can make a virtue out of market volatility: Build a portfolio around high-quality stocks with generous dividend yields to offer a cushion against market swings, and juice even more income from those stocks through the strategic use of options.
If you're still having a hard time stomaching the market's recent drop, consider this upside: yields on dividend-paying stocks are now even sexier than they were before.
Savers and investors relying on fixed incomes have been punished for several years.
Special dividends, or one-off payments to shareholders, usually get a nice spike during the final months of the year but 2010 was especially active as companies worried about the possibility of higher dividend tax rates for individuals next year.
Intel Corp. announced Friday that it is raising its dividend by 15%, joining the ranks of other technology giants that have beefed up dividend activity.
Whether you want income to help you cover your expenses in retirement or to help protect your portfolio from losses as you save for the day you quit working for good, you're not getting any help from the usual places these days.
Whether you want income to help you cover your expenses in retirement or to help protect your portfolio from losses as you save for the day you quit working for good, you're not getting any help from the usual places these days.
BP, which is responsible for the greatest oil spill in American history, has made the right call in deciding to suspend dividend payments this year.
In two tumultuous weeks in October 1987, the stock market shed nearly one-third of its value in perhaps the second most notorious crash in U.S. history. It could happen again. Don't be deceived by the rebounding economy, any more than the bulls should have been misled by the balmy climate during the late Reagan years. Right now, stocks are extremely vulnerable to the same scenario. The reason: The market is even more overpriced than when thunder struck on that distant Black Monday.
Many investors looking for safe havens in a rough market are latching onto double-digit dividend yields offered by real estate investment trusts.
Dividend investing used to be really simple. Whether you were retired and needed the quarterly cash payments your stocks threw off for current income or you were a conservative investor simply looking to reinvest those dividends to generate a bit more growth, you bought these Steady Eddies with the intention of holding them for years - if not for the rest of your life.
Question: I just turned 60. My husband and I had about $40,000 in our 401(k) invested in the market and just lost half of it. We live in a very depressed part of the country - Michigan - no work. So we were invested in "aggressive income" stocks - big mistake, but we needed the dividends to live on. This is all the money we have, so do we reinvest or what?
The predicted demise of bank dividends has been greatly exaggerated.
Falling bank stock prices are a warning to investors not to get too attached to those fat dividend checks.
American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. shares sank on Monday after the home loan provider announced "major" writedowns, delayed a dividend and said lenders were demanding it put up more cash.
Wouldn't it be great if you could find the ideal blend - an investment that combined the cozy security of government bonds with the double-digit returns investors expect from stocks? That seems like a pipe dream in a world where ten-year Treasuries yield 5 percent and equities sell at premium prices that augur a dim future.
Pfizer is not in the best of shape. The beating its stock took on Wednesday shows it. The question is, should the drug maker diet or bulk up?
Moody's Investors Service has questioned whether claims by private equity firms that they invest on a longer-term basis than public companies and are able to attract stronger management teams are justified.
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER RECORD. Every trading session this spring, it seemed, brought the Dow Jones and S&P 500 indexes to new heights. Driven by a tsunami of corporate buyouts and better-than-expected profit growth, stock prices kept climbing—nearly 10% for the year before a stumble in early June. Some optimists claimed the bull still had years to run.
Rich Kinder had a secret. In fact, he had just tipped his hand, but it would be weeks before his shareholders picked up on the hint. On a conference call with Wall Street analysts in April 2006, th...
Forty stock picks inspired by the greatest investors of all-time: From the deepest values to solid growth, these shares can make retirement dreams come true.
Recently I've been getting a lot of e-mails from readers wondering how they can find investments that offer high income at a time when most stocks and bonds are paying disappointing yields.
Since January, the price of oil has risen from $50 to $65 a barrel. Didn't notice? For casual investors that's understandable. After all, the last time this happened - back in the summer of 2005 - ...
The one-stoplight town of Carrizozo, N.M., is a dusty, tumbleweed-strewn place where you can ask the sheriff to pass the hot sauce at the 4 Winds diner. It may seem an unlikely venue to look for in...
These 20 stocks produced the largest total returns to shareholders in 2006. For this list, we included only Fortune 500 companies that traded for at least $2.
This has been a nerve-racking year for investors, with oil prices up, growth slowing and worries that the meltdown in the subprime-mortgage market could spill over into other parts of the economy. ...
When Jack Bogle, founder of the Vanguard group of mutual funds, says that he has just reached his 11th birthday, he is only partly kidding.
For ordinary investors, the market's recent heart-stopping plunge and only modestly reassuring rebound seemed to come out of nowhere.
The final figures are in, and 2006 was another bang-up year for corporate profits, with the stocks of the S&P 500 showing earnings growth of 16%. That may be cause for celebration at annual meeting...
"Would you accept the charges from Milton?" the operator would ask. I'd eagerly agree, knowing that the caller was my hero, the great economist Milton Friedman, who died last November. He always called collect. He was my only source who ever called collect. And the humor didn't escape him. One time, after the operator's Brooklynese introduction, he intoned in his trademark monotone, "I was most amused at the operator calling me Milton."
Like a big fat pig roasting on the spit, Big Oil's record profits have got investors salivating to carve up the cash pile.
The best mutual fund managers are an exceptionally dedicated lot. They devote hour upon hour to screening and researching investment ideas, poring over reams of data in the process. They traverse t...
As you may have noticed from the regular shouts of "New record high!" coming out of Wall Street, it's been a pretty exciting year for stock market investors. Overcoming all kinds of political and e...
Question: My wife and I are 72. We have a good health plan and about $2.3 million invested in mutual funds (60% in stocks, 40% in bonds). I am being pitched a master limited partnership (MLP) that contains REITs and other high-yielding securities.
With oil prices and a housing bust threatening the economy, we discovered ten solid stocks that can still pack a punch.By Jon Birger and David Stires, Fortune
The numbers don't lie. Here are seven great choices that investors can count on for the long term.By Yuval Rosenberg, Fortune contributor
Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian apparently lost about $8.6 million buying and selling GM over the past 19 months, although dividends from the troubled automaker allowed him to walk away with more than $100 million in cash from the investment.
PRIVACY
Tens of millions of baby boomers are approaching retirement, and if you're among them, you're likely wondering how you're going to tap your portfolio for the income you'll need over decades of life...
Tens of millions of baby boomers are approaching retirement, and if you're among them, you're likely wondering how you're going to tap your portfolio for the income you'll need over decades of life after work.
Spend some time looking for a good mutual fund that invests in dividend-paying stocks, and you begin to think you' ve slipped into an alternative universe. Among the 300 funds tracked by Morningsta...
WHEN YOU'RE SAVING FOR RETIREMENT, YOU FACE A timeline measured not in years, but in decades. How do you find investments that can go the distance, so that you don't have to keep worrying about you...
When it comes to withdrawing money from savings for retirement, why don't more advisors encourage people to just live off interest and dividends and leave the principal alone?
When you're saving for retirement, you face a timeline measured not in years, but in decades. How do you find investments that can go the distance, so that you don't have to keep worrying about your portfolio and making constant adjustments to your holdings, a practice that, study after study shows, lowers your returns?
Cisco Systems, the biggest manufacturer of Internet gear, expects to remain active with its share buybacks, the company said Wednesday.
One of the most reliable ways for investors to build their wealth is to focus on companies with long track records of increasing dividends.
Ford said Thursday it would slash its dividend in half and reduce the amount that directors are paid to serve on the board - news that sent its stock tumbling.
It sounds like a John Ford western. You have three characters: a tough, colorful veteran, a young gun with a chip on his shoulder, and a brainy guy. Throw 'em together, add a plot, and you have a m...
Murky. That's probably the best way to describe the outlook for the stock market these days. The May-June selloff sliced 5% from Standard & Poor's 500, and that was a portfolio paper cut compared w...
Merck's stock price is starting to climb out of its hole this year, but the drug giant still faces a long uphill climb fraught with obstacles if it ever plans to get to its pre-Vioxx scandal levels.
Bob Dylan, bard of the baby-boomers, turned 65 a few weeks ago. The milestone passed without much fanfare, but it was an unmistakable reminder that the generation that had hoped to stay forever you...
Investor anxiety keeps rising as the economic outlook gets more uncertain.
Soaring prices make gold, oil and other commodities markets look like bubbles waiting to burst. And recent big gains in small stocks recall the boom that occurred right before the last bear market....
One way to spot an attractive value is to compare a stock's total potential return with its P/E ratio. I've calculated this "return ratio" by dividing a stock's P/E by its combined estimated earnin...
The average dividend yield for the S&P 500 once topped 5 percent. But for most of the past decade, it has remained below 2 percent. Investors still seem to expect that the long-term payoff from blue-chip stocks will come from growth, not from income.
In a world that's buzzing over the Internet's raging return and the dollar play in Asian equities, it's hard to believe that the best place to invest may well be bank stocks.
President Bush on Wednesday afternoon signed into law another landmark piece of tax legislation.
The Senate on Thursday passed a GOP-supported final tax reconciliation bill that extends the reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends, and prevents millions of households from falling prey to the alternative minimum tax (AMT) in 2006.
The House passed a GOP-supported final tax reconciliation bill Wednesday that extends the reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends, and prevents millions of households from falling prey to the alternative minimum tax (AMT) in 2006.
Tax writers on Tuesday reached official agreement on a tax reconciliation bill that will extend the reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends and prevent millions of households from falling prey to the alternative minimum tax (AMT).
After months of heated debate, bluster and predictions of a done deal on the horizon, lawmakers still haven't signed off on a final tax bill. There is, however, a fair chance that a final deal could be announced this week.
It would be nice, wouldn't it, if creating a secure financial life for you and your family was a one-time move. But in real life, the wherewithal to build a future tends to arrive in dribs and drab...
My wife and I both contribute 8 percent to our 401(k)s and $200 a month each to IRAs. We have a little over $500,000 in total retirement savings (401(k), rollover IRAs and IRAs). I just turned 40 and am thinking about investing $100 a month or so in dividend-paying stocks to provide retirement income. What do you think about this plan - and do you have any suggestions for the top-five dividend-producing stocks over the past 10 to 20 years.
DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS
Leslie Moonves has spent his entire career trying to get people to watch television. He's been pretty good at it too. When he was president of Warner Bros. Television in the early '90s, he oversaw ...
Leslie Moonves has spent his entire career trying to get people to watch television. He's been pretty good at it too. When he was president of Warner Bros. Television in the early '90s, he oversaw the development of hit shows like Friends and ER, which became part of NBC's Thursday night "Must-see TV" lineup. He leaped to CBS in 1995 and proceeded to break the Peacock network's hold on Thursday night with phenomenally popular shows like Survivor and CSI.
Last year tech's cool kids had their moment in the sun. Google grew into a verb, and its stock price more than doubled. Apple morphed into the music company, and its shares did even better than Goo...
Last year tech's cool kids had their moment in the sun. Google grew into a verb, and its stock price more than doubled. Apple morphed into the music company, and its shares did even better than Google's. Corning spiked nearly 70 percent by selling glass for humongous flat-panel TVs. And Motorola rang up a 30 percent gain with its sleek mobile phones.
Mutual fund investors seeking dividend income often meet with frustration. That's because it's standard industry practice to deduct management fees from a fund's current income distributions.
Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe's largest telephone company, on Thursday said it would make its largest dividend payment in company history alongside a 43% decline in quarterly profit due to asset sales a year ago.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - There has been a lot of talk on Wall Street about one media megalith breakup that probably isn't going to happen. But there recently was another media split that did happen, and investors will soon get their first glimpse of just how it's working out.
General Motors Corp. slashed its dividend and cut the pay of CEO Rick Wagoner and other top officers Tuesday, and announced moves to cut retirement and health costs for nonunion workers.
General Motors Corp. said Monday it named a top aide to billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian to its board of directors, the latest push by the world's largest automaker to reverse last year's huge losses.
It is the instinctive wish of most American businesspeople, even those unlikely to be directly affected, that General Motors not go bankrupt. True, some people will say, "They had it coming to them...
Welcome to the Monday after Super Sunday ...
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Burger King Corp.'s (BKG.XX) private equity backers are looking to king-size their returns from the chain ahead of its initial public offering, with plans to collect a $400 million dividend, according to Moody's Investors Services.
The advisor to GM's largest individual shareholder called for a 50 percent cut in the automaker's dividend along with compensation cuts for the company's directors, management and hourly employees.
An adviser to GM financier Kirk Kerkorian is set to make a call Tuesday for the auto manufacturer to cut its dividend, according to published reports.
Private-equity firms are paying themselves lavish dividends and fees from the companies they acquire, loading up the acquired companies' balance sheets with debt, according to a published report.
With oil prices falling, corporate earnings still growing, and consumer confidence on the mend, the stock market has awakened from its 10-month slumber.
t balance between maximizing return and minimizing risk, and you're well on your way to reaching your goals. ...
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - In a close vote, the House on Thursday approved a $56 billion tax relief bill, the controversial centerpiece of which is a two-year extension through 2010 of reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
Mutual fund companies are slapping the word dividend on seemingly every new fund they trot out these days. It's easy to understand why they think the funds will sell: For five years, stocks that pa...
Here's how I see the outlook for stocks shaping up in 2006: Large swaths of the market are now undervalued, and many giant growth stocks are out-and-out bargains. If the economy performs as expecte...
Among the dark clouds hanging over General Motors' stock, add this question: How much of its already battered value is dependent on a dividend that few expect to continue at its current level?
Mutual fund companies are slapping the word dividend on seemingly every new fund they trot out these days.
With all the headlines focused on Merck's Vioxx litigation, it's easy to forget that the company faces big challenges in the business of actual drug making, with some of its biggest selling drugs facing patent expiry.
Intel Corp. said Thursday its board has approved a 25 percent increase in the quarterly cash dividend to 10 cents per share beginning in the first quarter of 2006.
Here's how I see the outlook for stocks shaping up in 2006: Large swaths of the market are now undervalued, and many giant growth stocks are out-and-out bargains. If the economy performs as expected and the geopolitical environment improves a bit, the market could take off.
Whether or not success in life is about just showing up, as Woody Allen claimed, success in retirement investing is about proper asset allocation. Divide your retirement savings to strike the right...
It's no secret that this has not been the best of years for Hollywood.
Early 2006 could bring a long-awaited renaissance for Microsoft -- and not a moment too soon for many investors.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Tech investors should unite and in one loud voice cry out the words made famous by Cuba Gooding Jr.'s Rod Tidwell character in "Jerry Maguire."
THERE WON'T BE CHAMPAGNE AND speeches to mark the event, but corporate America is about to make history. For the quarter ended Sept. 30, companies in the S&P 500 are expected to boost earnings by 1...
Whether or not success in life is about just showing up, as Woody Allen claimed, success in retirement investing is about proper asset allocation. Divide your retirement savings to strike the right balance between maximizing return and minimizing risk, and you're well on your way to reaching your goals.
When times are uncertain, you feel more secure if you have money in the bank and lots more rolling in. But you also know that you won't get rich by letting cash sit in bank CDs. To make your saving...
If you want assets that pay generous dividends, you face a clear and simple choice today. You can place your money in a sector that is one of the stock market's best performers over the past five y...
When times are uncertain, you feel more secure if you have money in the bank and lots more rolling in. But you also know that you won't get rich by letting cash sit in bank CDs. To make your savings grow, you need to put your money to work.
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