If anyone ever tells you that you must choose between dividends and capital gains, it’s now safe to laugh. A full 135 companies have increased their dividends AND decreased their shares outstanding through buybacks in each of the past five years. Stock buybacks… Read More

I doubt you’ve ever heard of John Wightkin. He’s the Director of Equity Research Applications of the Schwab Center for Financial Research. Sure that’s a fancy title, but John is doing some very important work in the field of income investing. In fact, John Wightkin just confirmed what I’ve been… Read More

Carl Icahn is up to his usual tricks. The “activist investor” has been involved in an attempt to gain control of the board of directors at Biogen Idec (Nasdaq: BIIB), a leading biotechnology company. His end game is to force a sale of the company. If he… Read More

A year ago the sky was falling. At least, that’s what some people thought. When pandemonium was at its height in September of last year, Warren Buffett encouraged investors to buy U.S. stocks in an op-ed for The New York Times. Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A), Buffett’s holding company, arranged multibillion-dollar… Read More

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are required by law to pay 90% of their taxable income as dividends. In return, REITs can deduct shareholder dividends from their taxable income, so most REITs wind up paying little or… Read More

They say what’s past is prologue. So when history starts repeating itself like this, it’s wise to take notice. Mergers and acquisitions are picking up after a drought in activity for much of the past year. On Monday, Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) said it would buy computer-services provider Perot Systems (NYSE:… Read More

Just how influential is Warren Buffett? He was in China last week and went to a store called Dalian Dayang. Buffett told the store owner the suits were wonderful, and three days later the store’s shares had risen +23%. Buffett’s endorsement should count, too,… Read More

When it comes to investing, there are almost never any guarantees or absolutes. But I can give you one iron-clad, take-it-to-the-bank prediction — wireless communication is going to throw off buckets of profits during the next few years. I’m not exactly going out on a limb. Across the globe, the… Read More

When Ray Davis applied for his loan, he expected the application to be a 200-page document that might take weeks to fill out. It turned out it was only two pages long. Davis was shocked. The two pages had a lot of white space. Americans have heard about some banks’… Read More

Companies are clinging to their cash these days. It’s not hard to see why. Cash is harder to come by in a recession. And this new mindset toward cash reverses a trend. Shareholders, fed up with a long period of stingy dividends, put pressure… Read More