The markets reacted negatively today to some overnight
developments in Asia. First came some new data points that
indicated China's economy is slowing down. Throw in a defiant North
Korean missile launch in the face of global efforts to dissuade the
action, and we're seeing a nice-sized pullback this morning.
Will these developments be quickly forgotten once earnings
season kicks into gear next week? Perhaps, but for now, let's look
at today's headline names that moved the tape. Earnings from
financial giants JP Morgan (
JPM
) (
report here
) and Wells Fargo (
WFC
) (
read more
) failed to impress investors, and the results had both stocks
ending in the red. Other financials felt some of the residual
selling effects, including Citigroup (
C
) and PNC Financial (
PNC
).
Elsewhere, Consol Energy (
CNX
) (
read more here
) and Illinois Tool Works (
ITW
) (
full report
) were also down following cautious Wall Street analyst commentary.
On the flipside, shares of Johnson Controls (
JCI
) and Phillip Morris International (
PM
) (
read more
) held on to some of their early gains following positive analyst
commentary.
Bargains Make for Tough Returns
We heard some big news recently here in the South Jersey/Philly
area recently. A local investor group has purchased Philadelphia
Media Network, which consists of newspapers The Inquirer and
Philadelphia Daily News, as well as the Philly.com website, for $55
million. Seems like a bargain on the surface, right? Well, let's
take a look at the sellers' situation.
You see, the investor group who purchased the properties in 2006
paid a whopping
$515 million
for it. They've now learned costly lesson for lacking the vision to
know the newspaper business was declining sharply. Now the new
buyers are hoping they can stem the bleeding, but we all know it
will not be an easy road.
Rather than playing in what some perceive as deep "value,"
usually the smarter play is to stick with proven investments that
are not in a revenue free-fall. Too many investors focus on bargain
shopping and tend to hold on to losing positions, essentially
disagreeing with the market on the true value of a company's future
prospects. Have we seen turnarounds happen? Certainly, but more
often than not, it is wiser to move on to other investment
opportunities.
Separating Yourself from the Pack
If you have been following the major focus on Facebook and its
soon-to-be-IPO (coming up in May), you will probably read a lot of
stories about CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg and his insatiable
appetite to continuously innovate and bring a constant stream of
upgrades to the Facebook user experience.
In his mind, the idea is to not let the site get stagnant. He's
clearly realized what tends to happen when a company or site's
popularity plateaus (remember how AOL, Yahoo, Lycos, MySpace,
Prodigy, and other tech media platforms lost their sizzle?).
I can't say we act much differently here at Dividend.com than
Mark Zuckerberg (albeit on a sliver of their financial firepower).
We constantly try to keep adding new features to Dividend.com to
keep us atop the dividend investment research space. Whether you
own your own business or have been moving up the corporate ranks,
having the passion to keep your leadership spot is paramount.
The more you can do to put space in between yourself and your
competition, the longer your stay at the top will be. The minute
you get complacent is the minute you could get the knock on your
door that you never expected to get. The financial world we all
live in now promises us nothing. It never used to be this way, so
we have no choice but to adapt and fortify our resolve.
Our
Beat The Markets with Dividend Stocks
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A Look to Next Week and a Weekend Preview
Looking ahead to next week, earnings will pick up significantly,
with reports from the likes of IBM Corp (
IBM
), Microsoft (
MSFT
), General Electric (
GE
), Johnson & Johnson (
JNJ
), and Coca-Cola (
KO
), just to name a few.
Be sure to catch up with our latest watchlist updates this
weekend on
Dividend.com Premium
, including reports on earnings/story stocks, analyst
upgrades/downgrades, dividend ETFs, and much more. And as always,
you can view our current recommendations on our industry-leading
Best Dividend Stocks List
.
Thanks for reading, and I'll see you this weekend! P.S. Please
pass this e-mail on to someone you think can use some financial
motivation as well as being kept in the financial news loop that
could affect them.
Be sure to visit our complete recommended list of the
Best Dividend Stocks
, as well as a detailed explanation of
our ratings system here
.