The markets liked this morning's jobs report, as new jobs
created came in a bit better than expected. This move comes despite
unemployment remaining unchanged at 8.3%. Some market-watchers
(including myself) are pointing to the quality of jobs
(part-time/low-paying industries) as a point of concern
however.
Investors reacted well to earnings warnings from semiconductor
plays Texas Instruments (
TXN
) (
more here
) and Altera Corp (
ALTR
) (
read more
). Altera closed in the green and Texas Instruments ended slightly
lower on those negative news bytes. Wall Street analyst upgrades
played out well in today's up market with names like Lennar Corp (
LEN
), AvalonBay Communities (
AVB
), Nike (
NKE
) (
read more
) and Kohl's (
KSS
) (
more here
) all trading higher.
New Dividend Stock Recommended Today!
We just upgraded a new dividend stock this morning onto our
industry-leading
Best Dividend Stocks List
. Be sure to
check out our post
detailing the upgrade
Just Because You
Can
Doesn't Mean You
Should
We've seen a tremendous amount of buzz about a woman in Michigan
who won a million dollar jackpot recently, yet was still collecting
welfare. She claimed that after taking the lump sum option, she
netted around $500K after taxes. Meanwhile, she continues to
collect public assistance of around $200 per month.
What's worse, the woman was completely unapologetic about
continuing to collect, and legally, she'd actually done nothing
wrong. She's was still unemployed, after all. She also bought a new
house and a brand new car, so her expenses rose significantly since
hitting the jackpot.
Opponents of the current welfare system certainly have plenty of
new ammunition following this story. It's hard to deny the fact
that our society is becoming more and more dependent on
governmental aid. Most people aren't hesitating to collect
government assistance, and some choose to stay in the system for
years rather than attempt to improve their lot in life.
At the end of the day, we all have the power to decide our
financial future. You can take most any job and build a great
future from it. We've seen restaurant owners who started as
dishwashers, salon owners who started by washing hair and sweeping
floors. Government assistance is not a permanent solution, and
never has been. Should someone have shame in taking it if they
truly need it? Of course not. But as in this lottery winner's
example, people need to have some pride and exercise some common
sense about it. She should have seen her lottery win as an
opportunity to break out of her financial struggles once and for
all.
Smiling Through it All
I saw a press conference recently in which Houston Texans
running back Arian Foster discussed his new $43 million contract
he'd just signed. It was a moment that brought out a lot of emotion
as Foster thought back to the struggles his family had growing up.
One story he remembered clearly was his mom pawning her wedding
ring to put food on the table. He said he knew that at that point
he would have worked three jobs to make sure his own children would
never have to struggle as much.
He said that regardless of how hard it was for his family, they
would smile through it all and not fuss about much. He then said a
few words that pretty much summed up life when you think about it.
He said "we're all people, we just want to smile." That's about as
good as it gets for me.
Regardless of the struggles we've all faced at one time (or
those we still face in any areas of our lives), we should remain
optimistic about the future. We all control our ultimate destiny,
just as long as we're willing to put in the efforts necessary to
change things for the better.
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A Look to Next Week and a Weekend Preview
Looking ahead to next week, earnings will be fairly light, with
reports from the likes of cereal giant General Mills (
GIS
), retailer Guess (
GES
) and homebuilder KB Home (
KBH
) 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
.