Weekly Dividend Investing Roundup - February 1, 2008

This week started off with a bang a I was the host of the 137th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. It was a great experience and I recommend it to other personal finance bloggers. It takes some time to organize so make sure you account for that. Today is my Weekly Dividend Investing Roundup and the first one for February. I am glad January is done - it always is a tough month with the cold, dark, and dog days of winter. Here is a list of the Carnivals and other articles that I enjoyed throughout the week.

The Carnivals

My Adventures into The Street hosted the 73rd edition of Festival of Stocks, which included my analysis on GE.

A Slacker’s Quest for his First Million hosted the Simply Investing Blog Carnival which included Part 6 of my investment process series.

The Articles

The article caught my eye simply because of the title - XXX Warning - and it was on the cover of the financial website I look at everyday - Globeinvestor.com. I have talked about the premise before on this blog - the media perpetuates the market actions by writing sensational pieces that really add no value to our understanding of the market happenings. I guess I am not the only one with this opinion.

Money Ning wrote an interesting piece about the lack of retirement education today. People need a lot of help in the financial areas of their lives.

Want yet another article on how dividend stocks can help tame a bear market, then check out this article from Money Morning. The articles concludes, “Because dividend-paying stocks tend to be downdraft resistant, portfolios with higher yields tend to last longer and pay stronger. That’s something that’s important to all of us, but especially to investors who are nearing retirement, or who have already retired.”

There are a number of strategies that can effective in retirement. This article from Stock Trading to Go provided a good summary of what a lot of research tells us is important in our retirement years.

This is an interesting articles that talks about the impact of one year on long-term averages. To me, what this post from JLP at AllFinancialMatters tells us is that an investors asset allocation is the most important factor - the correct balance between risk and reward can make all the difference.

I have to admit, that when I first started investing I made a lot of mistakes. I still do. My Two Dollars provided us with his take on investing without educating yourself. My only comment for new investors would be to at least steer away from mutual funds and focus on index funds.

If you are looking for a list of high dividend stocks, then The Div Guy produced a list from one of his screens that provides some opportunities for additional analysis.

Finally, BusinessWeek wrote and article after all of our dividend investing hearts called The Cream of the Dividend Crop. Here is a description of the screen, “For this week’s screen, we’ve decided to use S&P’s proprietary Stock Appreciation Ranking System (STARS) to find the most attractive names among the upper crust. We looked for the aristocrats that also carry the highest investment rankings of 4 STARS (buy) or 5 STARS (strong buy) from S&P equity analysts. Stocks with those designations are expected to outperform the S&P-500 index on a total return basis over the coming 12 months, with shares rising in price on an absolute basis.” It actually provided me with a list of stocks that I am going to have a look at.

That is it for this week. Thanks again to all my readers for coming back day after day to read my stuff. I really do appreciate it!