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Top Picks for 2011 Winners

December 29, 2011
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As the new year approaches, we’re reviewing the past year’s worth of Investment of the Week and Dick Davis Digests. This week, I’m going to spotlight the year’s best-performing Top Picks. Every year, we ask all of our Digest contributors to send us a recommendation of their single favorite stock to own in the coming year. Their submissions range from unknown small-caps to the past year’s winners, a broad range that reflects the wide variety of investing styles practiced by our contributors. Once in July and again at the end of the year, we revisit the Top Picks to...

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Four Market-Beating Dividend Aristocrats

December 14, 2011
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Several of the best-performing stocks featured in Investment of the Week over the past year came from the same issue on April 12 that featured several Dividend Aristocrats. Dividend Aristocrats are stocks that have increased their dividends every year for at least 25 consecutive years. They’re primarily large-cap, relatively stable blue-chip stocks. Because of their reputation for steady returns, income investors often seek out Dividend Aristocrats to serve as the core of their income-generating portfolios. In the eight months since these stocks were recommended, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained no value–as I write this it is down...

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Three Yields for Current Conditions

November 29, 2011
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The market was only open for three-and-a-half days last week, and it still managed to lose approximately 5% of its value. I don’t have to tell you that’s not good. I’ve been discussing the overall market a lot lately (if you didn’t catch last week’s market video, you can watch it here) so today I think we’ll ignore it–and focus on stocks that ignore it too (more or less). Below are three recommendations from the latest Dick Davis Dividend Digest. Each one of these three stocks is a conservative dividend payer with relatively low correlation to larger market moves....

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Two Plays on Natural Gas

November 15, 2011
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For almost the entire time I’ve been editing the Dick Davis Digests, experts have been predicting that natural gas prices would rise. Their reasoning is that, per dollar, you can currently produce much more energy from natural gas than from oil. Since the energy produced by each is indistinguishable, the experts argue that the cheaper fuel should gain popularity, even driving its price up into parity with oil’s. Economically, of course, their argument makes sense. But due to a variety of real-world factors–existing infrastructure for using the two fuels, and the relative growth in the supplies of oil and...

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Spotlight Stock: Activision Blizzard (ATVI)

November 3, 2011
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So, what should you buy today? To my friend–the one who wanted to buy Netflix–I suggested the Spotlight Stock from the latest Dick Davis Investment Digest: Activision Blizzard (ATVI). Activision Blizzard owns and publishes three huge video game titles–Starcraft, Call of Duty, and the enormously popular World of Warcraft–in addition to many smaller games. The titles have been popular among gamers for ages: Call of Duty is on its eighth version, and World of Warcraft is the world’s most popular online multi-player role-playing game. But the stock is just being discovered by investors … as attested to by the...

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