Dividend Investing Weekly Newsletters
Fed Gets the Hall Pass to Raise Rates
The discourse of Fed speak for the past week has been more transparent than at any time in recent memory. It’s as if the entire body of Federal Reserve members got on the speaking circuit to pontificate on how the latest string of economic data supports the rationale of tightening short-term interest rates by a […]
A Little Clarity on Fed Policy for a Change
Investors should be pleasantly surprised by the notion that the minutes for the most recent Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting actually offered some real value for the market. They did so with the following candid assessment: “Most participants judged that if incoming data were consistent with economic growth picking up in the second quarter, […]
Reliable Dividends Coming at a Higher Premium
With roughly 90% of the S&P 500 reporting, overall Q1 earnings are on track to show a 5.1% decline, the third-straight year-over-year decline. Revenue will likely slide 1.9%. S&P energy companies are on track to report an outright loss while other key sectors, including financials, industrials and technology, also are reporting lower earnings and revenue, […]
Softer Payroll Data Supports Lower Rates for Longer Case
Last Friday, the Labor Department reported the U.S. economy added only 160,000 jobs to the nation’s payrolls, coming in well shy of the 207,000 estimate. The data comes a day after the Challenger Jobs Cuts report showed a spike of 5.8% for the month of April. This is just another nail in the coffin of […]
Selling on the Earnings News
Leading up to earnings season the major averages built up some nice gains, based on the expectation that most companies would at least meet their widely lowered first quarter profit forecasts. Without much fanfare, that’s exactly how the reporting season has played out, with the exception of a few high-profile beats and misses along the […]
Traipsing Through the Earnings Minefield
Across the United States, millions of families make it a practice to sit down at the kitchen table and draw up the monthly budget. For the great majority of folks, upon tabulating the income versus expenses, there is an ever-dwindling amount of discretionary income left to pick up a few extra items at the mall, […]
Coping with Rising Taxes and Lower Yields
Last Friday was tax day in America and the old adage that there are two things that are guaranteed in life, death and taxes, still holds true, but with the caveat that taxes are almost guaranteed to be higher in the future. There’s Obamacare, a huge spike in social security, Medicare and Medicaid recipients, an […]
Markets Sing When Fed Officials on the Same Sheet of Music
Last Thursday night, Fed Chair Yellen and former Fed Chairs Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker took part in a panel titled, “When the Federal Reserve Speaks… the World Listens.” Fed Chair Yellen said that some slack remains in the U.S. labor market. She said that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is not […]
Taking the Sheen off the Oil Rally
From the latest headlines within the energy sector, there is a well-defined resistance level for WTI crude at $40 a barrel. Last week, U.S. crude stockpiles rose by 2.3 million barrels to 534.8 million barrels, the seventh week at record highs, data from the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration showed. The recent price recovery was […]
Hawkish Fed Chatter Sends Dollar Higher, Oil Lower
The ink was still wet on the March 16 post-Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy notes when the U.S. central bank held the line on interest rates while substantially scaling back its expectations for further moves ahead. At the December FOMC meeting, the Fed had projected four rate hikes in 2016 but the U.S. central […]
