Many investors thought that they could time the market to their advantage. But actually they just guessed about the psychology of other investors, trying to figure out when others might start selling. In fact this explains why so many investors were holding stocks while they also thought the market was overpriced, according to Robert Shiller from The Washington Post.

In today’s low interest rate environment, yield-hungry investors might want to invest in financially strong blue chip companies that offer the potential for stable and solid dividends. I filtered the 200 largest U.S. stocks (by market cap), and below are 20 highest dividend yield companies (sort by yield %).

I previously offered screen results for high yield ETFs trading above their 200 day moving average and with an average volume of greater then 50k. The response was well received so below are the results of a screen for ETFs with a yield of 7% or greater with no volume or trend requirement.

As I stated previously, many on the list can be especially volatile. Generally, the higher the dividend yield the more volatile the security and at-risk is the dividend (the market is not going to give something for nothing). In addition, many companies are cutting dividends during this difficult period, which means when it comes time for an equity based ETF to pay out its next dividend, the payment could be less then it has paid in the past.

By Martin Denholm

Despite the “sell in May and go away” investment adage, the stock market sauntered into the final day of May this morning holding steady after a furious spring rally. All three major indexes - the Dow Industrials, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 - are set to end the month at least around the same place they started it.

WisdomTree Investments (WSDT.PK) is changing the investment strategy of two of its dividend-focused exchange-traded funds so that they exclude exposure to the Financials sector.

Beginning in late April, the WisdomTree Dividend Top 100 (NYSE: DTN) will be renamed the WisdomTree Dividend ex-Financials Fund; its international counterpart, the WisdomTree International Dividend Top 100 (NYSE: DOO), will be renamed the WisdomTree International Dividend Ex-Financials Fund.

Last Thursday, Ian Salisbury's "Fund Track" item in the Journal included the following nugget:

There are 721 ETFs with about $478 billion in assets, according to the Investment Company Institute, a trade group.

A recent blog posting over at Morningstar sniped at Professor Jeremy Seigel of Wisdom Tree, indicating that his firm's stock selection methodology and retention of assets depended on his call that a market bottom had been hit.

The post compared the performance of several Wisdom Tree ETFs to various total market benchmarks, showing relative YTD performance is lagging for Wisdom Tree dividend selection process. While true, it ignores the beating that all value benchmarks have taken since the credit crisis began in the summer of 2007.

Evidence suggests the utility sector and bond market is acting adversely to the Wednesday economic report that inflation is rising.

1. The ongoing Google Finance chart of the dividend paying stocks, of VPU, DES, DLN and DOO shows that concerns over inflation have hit the utility stocks hard; they fell 4% on Wednesday the 16th, and Thursday the 17th, while the other dividend stocks as a group have risen 4% while the overall stock market, VTI, rose 2.5%.
2. The ongoing Google Finance chart of of interest rate sensitive sectors, VPU, TLT and DOO, shows that the utility stocks fell 4% on Wednesday the 16th, and Thursday the 17th, and Treasury Bonds, TLT, fell 2%.
3. The chart of the Intermediate US Government Bond ETF, TLT daily, as of July 17th, 2008 shows two fractal breaks lower with RSI falling below 50 and a bearish MACD crossover.
4. The chart of the interest rate on the 30 Year US Treasury Bond, $TYX daily, shows that the bond market place called interest rates higher on Wednesday July 16, 2008 and Thursday July, 17, 2008, in response to the Wednesday economic report that inflation is rising as well as the Federal Reserve's proposed guaranteeing and/or recapitalizing of Freddie Mac (FRE) and Fannie Mae (FNM); note the breakout of RSI of 50 and the MACD bullish crossover.

The Philadelphia Manufacturing Philly shows contracting orders and employment.

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Almost daily the Wall Street Journal [WSJ] publishes the performance of the top 15 yield-producing ETFs. They are listed under the title of Ways to Invest for Yield. The data reproduced here are from the January 29, 2008 issue. The key data are yield, price, and 1-day change. The yields are particularly high for ETFs, suggesting that these ETFs are good investments. But, are they? Can we read too much into the lucrative yields?

The debate over fundamentally weighted indexes has become a common topic of discussion in indexing circles. Detractors of the theory argue that it results in indexes with a small-cap value tilt, and as of December 31, they can now point to 2007 as proof. In the year that large-cap and growth outperformed small-cap and value, fundamentally weighted indexes did not fare so well in comparison with cap-weighted indexes. In particular, dividend-weighted strategies seem to have been hit the hardest on the domestic front; the Dow Jones U.S. Select Dividend Index, for example, was down 5.16% in 2007, while the S&P 500 was up 5.49%. That's a difference in performance of nearly 1,000 basis points.

In this comparison, we examine large-cap and small-cap domestic ETFs as well as international ones from WisdomTree (WSDT.PK) and PowerShares in comparison with other cap-weighted ETFs.

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit: With the recent cut in the Discount Rate, there has been a lot of focus on dividend paying stocks that could move higher as investors search for yield that has been lost in the fixed income markets. For investors that want to spread risk by investing in a basket of stocks instead of specific companies, dividend ETFs might be attractive.

Below we highlight a list of dividend ETFs across a variety of styles and regions. We have sorted the ETFs by their percentage change since the 7/19 market top.

Barclays iShares ETFs
iShares Dow Jones EPAC Select Dividend Index Fund (IDV)

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit: With nearly 600 US ETFs, it is often difficult for investors to navigate through the maze and find the specific ones they are looking for. Bespoke is currently working on a project to simplify this process for investors, so if you are an investor that uses ETFs, be sure to check back with us in the future.

Below we highlight a list of 26 dividend ETFs for investors looking for yield. We also provide the average yield of the stocks that make up the ETF.

The press release mentions Invest N Retire has designed a proprietary system and methodology for managing tax-deferred retirement plans which allows clients to include ETFs in their retirement portfolio without passing on most commissions to them. Employees can own individual and fractional shares of ETFs minus the expense of setting up an individual directed brokerage account.

The smart investor will make sure that their portfolios can benefit from rising global markets, but still weather the inevitable pullbacks. One way to achieve this is to have a nice chunk in dividend and income rich ETFs.

This first interview is with Luciano Siracusano, Director of Research for ETF firm WisdomTree Asset Management, which has sponsored the interview. It works like this: