Below are five of Young Research’s most popular dividend investing posts of 2019. When Dividends Pay You to be Patient Young Research's Retirement Compounders® Investment Program Procter & Gamble (PG) Stock: The Only True Dividend King The Highest Yielding S&P 500 Stocks Dividends Then and Now Are the Answer … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2019
SECURE Act Passed by Congress on the Way Out the Door
You've read about the SECURE Act and the hidden taxes targeting your family that it contains. Now, while everyone is busy Christmas shopping, and just as Congress is about to leave town, the bill was smuggled into a spending bill, and pushed through the legislature. According to Barron's the bill "means a spate of changes for retirees related to their required minimum withdrawals, the way they use IRAs, and rethinking estate planning options." Reshma Kapadia reports on the bill for Barron's writing: The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement—better known as the Secure … [Read more...]
Here’s How I Climbed on the Dividend Bandwagon
There are few histories as crucial to the course of my life as my awakening to the power of compound interest and the importance of dividends. Since my decision to climb on the dividend bandwagon, I have been an evangelist to hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers, and many more investors beyond. My message has been consistent and clear, and I don’t regret focusing on dividends a bit. Here’s how it all started. Back to Monterey and Woodstock I’ve been developing investment strategies for investors like you before The Association kicked off the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival … [Read more...]
A Step in the Right Direction for Protecting Investors
The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards is finally taking measures to clean up the error-filled reporting on its website that classifies many troubled financial advisors as having "clean" records. The CFP has been relying on these advisors to self-report any bad behavior, and with predictable results that has failed. Many of the advisors, who are mostly brokers and insurance agents, are regulated by FINRA as well. FINRA has disclosed their bad behavior, but CFP has missed the mark. That might finally change. Jason Zweig and Andrea Fuller report at The Wall Street Journal: The … [Read more...]
Sweden Raises Rates—All the Way to Zero
After being one of the first countries to lead the world into the negative interest rate era, Sweden has decided to end that policy. Paul Hannon reports in The Wall Street Journal: In 2009, the Riksbank, the world’s oldest central bank, became the first to charge commercial banks to hold deposits rather than pay them interest. In 2015, it lowered its key policy rate below zero, following a similar move by the European Central Bank the year before. On Thursday, the Riksbank raised the key rate to zero from minus 0.25%. The bank moved because a majority of its policy makers expect inflation … [Read more...]
Minimum Wage Hike is Why Long-Standing California Restaurants Are Closing
Restaurants in Sacramento are closing up shop citing the impending Jan 1, 2020 minimum wage hike in California. Some of these institutions have been in business for decades. The new hourly minimum wage will rise to $13. Compare California’s min wage to the “open for business” state of Utah. The Beehive state has a minimum wage of $7.50 and, guess what else—rising wages. When money is respected, good things happen. That is exactly what’s happening in rich states like Utah. Here's the story of one businessman being hurt by the minimum wage hikes from Fox … [Read more...]
The Dividend King of the North
Which Canadian stocks are dividend kings? If you go by the internet’s definition of a dividend king (50 consecutive years of dividend increases), there aren’t any dividend kings in Canada, but as we wrote here, there can only be one true dividend king. The Dividend King of the United States is Procter & Gamble. Procter & Gamble is the dividend king of the U.S. because it has increased its dividend annually for 65 consecutive years (tied for first with one other company). Who is the Canadian Dividend King? There aren’t any Canadian companies that meet the 50-year dividend king … [Read more...]
Your Retirement Life: No Gold/Silver in Safe Deposit Box
A son of long-time subscribers to Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report emailed me last week about a letter his parents had received from their bank branch. Not a phone call to set up a meeting, a letter. According to him, the bank sent the letter to his parents stating that no gold or silver would be allowed in the bank’s safe deposit boxes. There was no explanation for the change in the letter. The note wasn’t from a small local bank on Main Street, USA. This bank is one of the biggest players in the world. Its regional branches extend like tentacles to every street corner … [Read more...]
Trump Era Adds 10,000 Points to the Dow, and Counting
Fox Business's Jonathan Garber reports that on Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 28,332.74, and therefore had climbed more than 10,000 points since Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States on November 8, 2016. That's a 54% gain, excluding the Dow's all-important dividends. He writes: The gains show why U.S. markets have become the envy of the world under Trump, who has followed through on his promises of cutting taxes and regulations and rewriting global trade deals in America's favor. By comparison, global exchanges such as Hong Kong’s Hang … [Read more...]
Can Netflix Win with Overseas Growth?
In the FT, Alex Barker reports that Netflix is generating rapid subscriber growth outside the U.S. by accepting lower revenue per user in foreign markets. Barker writes: More than a quarter of the California-based company’s revenues were generated in Europe, Middle East and Africa in the first three quarters of 2019, according to the numbers released on Monday. The subscriber base has grown by 25 per cent in the first three quarters of 2019 alone. But the average revenue raised for each of the 47.4m users stood at $10.26, compared with $12.36 in the US and Canada, where Netflix has been … [Read more...]