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It wasn’t regarded as one of the bigger financial news stories, unless you’re a dividend investor, but McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) recent dividend increase is good news indeed. The bellwether fast food chain raised its quarterly payout from 61 cents to 70 cents, a nearly 15% increase, which hikes the annual payout from $2.44 a share to $2.80. At a recent closing price of $89.34 this gives the stock a current annual yield of 3.13%. That’s not bad when you also consider this is Read the rest of this entry »

I wasn’t around when the movie “Cool Hand Luke” came out, but my mom loves old movies and she always had them on when I was a little kid. To this day, I remember her renting “Cool Hand Luke” not long after my family got its first VCR in 1985. And like many of you that have seen this classic film, one line stands out in my mind: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

No, today’s column will not be devoted to Read the rest of this entry »

When Chinese internet stocks, most notably Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU), sold off more than 10% in one day last week, investors' reaction was mostly twofold. One, many just attributed Baidu's and the other internet stocks' decline to the sell off in general. Two, Read the rest of this entry »

As the world's capital markets continued to digest the latest dreary economic news, the Shanghai Composite Index wasn't left out, recently closing at 2,433.16. This is only a drop of 9.9 points for the day, but the close brought the index near the its 52-week low of an intraday dip just above 2,400. The ongoing melodrama of the Greek debt and the sober realization that not only is there not going to be any shining white knight riding to Greece's rescue, but that the Read the rest of this entry »

Dividend investing, like any other aspect of investing, can get to be kind of a specialty. After all, someone who’s a Forex trader or someone else who practically lives to deal in commodities is naturally going to have a different way of going about their business than someone who might be a growth stock aficionado. That stands to reason. The Read the rest of this entry »

Exchange traded products were in spotlight again last week – and not in a good way – on news that a UBS trader had committed $2.3 billion in unauthorized ETF trades. When the news broke, I knew exactly what the reaction was going to be: Blame the product, in this case ETFs, not the person committing the misdeed.

Unfortunately, I was right. Such is life in the world of ETFs these days. Going back to Read the rest of this entry »

As part of a package of 36 regulatory, financing, trade and cooperative measures announced August 17th at a Hong Kong forum by China's Vice Premier, Li Keqiang, foreign investors will have new opportunities in China, while greater use of the yuan as an Read the rest of this entry »

With the latest market worries -legitimate ones at that- over the drama of the Greek debt and its possible effects playing out in Europe, investors are naturally skittish about things. After all, we’ve seen selling sprees in both the spring and summer against the backdrop of potentially serious economic problems which haven’t been satisfactorily resolved. So it’s prudent to be cautious, as we’ve learned from previous experiences where Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite themes is back in the headlines. That being correlation of various sectors and asset classes to the S&P 500. Previously, I've been strident in my opposition to blaming ETFs for this scenario and I see little in the way of compelling evidence to make me change my mind. Still, investors are facing quite the correlation conundrum these days and what that means is the number of so-called safe haven choices for investors Read the rest of this entry »

If you are immersed in financial news daily as many of us are, it’s very easy to become more and more caught up in the rapid changes. If you are watching the markets to find the right moment perhaps to trade a stock you own, particularly in what has been a summer of volatility, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment by moment market changes.

Sometimes it’s necessary to be immersed Read the rest of this entry »