In compiling the Dividend Champions list (found here: http://dripinvesting.org/Tools/Tools.asp ) I get to see which companies are nearing the anniversaries of their previous dividend increases. Most of these firms raise their payout about the same time every year, but some companies go longer before boosting their dividends, and this can raise concerns about their streaks of increases.

Dividends in Doubt Series

In case you missed it, there was no April article in this series because, by late April, nothing much had changed from the 29 companies listed in late March. No sooner had I posted a Stock Talk to that effect than a slew of changes took place in rapid succession. There are also 29 companies in the list below, but nine of them - the last companies listed - are appearing for the first time. From the March article, there were three deletions: Pitney Bowes (PBI), which finally

Hi-Crush Partners LP (HCLP) is producer of monocrystalline sand. Monocrystalline sand is a mineral that is used to boost the recovery rates of hydrocarbons from oil and natural gas wells. HCLP's assets include sand reserves and related processing and transportation facilities in Wyeville, Wisconsin, plus a 561-acre facility with integrated rail infrastructure. The company was founded in 2010 and is based in Houston, Texas. The company went public on August last year.

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HCLP is a high yield, cheap stock that is gaining attention from investors focused on dividends. HCLP is a Master Limited Partnership [MLP]. MLPs are publicly traded limited partnerships that must derive their cash flows from real estate, natural resources and commodities. MLPs offer income and growth to a portfolio through superior returns and capital appreciation. HCLP is one of the most valuable MLPs in the market. It strikes a perfect balance between high yields,

This Morningstar/YChart (M/Y) report series was encouraged by Seeking Alpha reader requests and began in February. It complemented my reports of possible dividend yield based buy opportunities from eight major market sectors as listed by Yahoo Finance which I've posted since the fall of 2011.

So, responding to both Seeking Alpha reader requests and Ycharts.com migration to an eleven sector list, this report provided three actionable conclusions about the highest yield (dividend/price) stocks from one of the Morningstar/YCharts (M/Y) sectors: basic materials; communication services; consumer cyclical; consumer defensive; energy; financial services; healthcare; industrials; real estate; technology; utilities.

Dog theory picks were supplemented by one year mean target price estimates from broker analysts. Those combined results composed the Arnold m/y basic materials sector selections for April shown below.

Dog Metrics Ordered Ten Top Basic Materials Dogs

The ten best m/y basic materials stocks showing

In my previous posts (here and here), I tried to rank all the stocks that are included in the S&P 500 and in the S&P MidCap 400 indexes by the sum of their dividend and earnings yields. In this article, I did the same for all stocks that are included in the Russell 1000 index.

Russell 1000

Description from Russell Investments:

The Russell 1000 Index measures the performance of the large-cap segment of the U.S. equity universe. It is a subset of the Russell 3000® Index and includes approximately 1000 of the largest securities based on a combination of their market cap and current index membership. The Russell 1000 represents approximately 92% of the U.S. market.

Definition of Earnings Yield by Investopedia:

The earnings per share for the most recent 12-month period divided by the current market price per share. The earnings yield (which is the

This article reports tantalizing takes from basic materials sector stocks tracked down as of closing prices April 26 using dividend dog methodology. This report series started in the fall of 2011 by applying dog dividend methodology to reveal possible buy opportunities in each of eight major market sectors listed by Yahoo Finance: basic materials (BasMats), consumer goods (ConGo), financials (Fins), healthcare (Heal), industrial goods (IndiGo), services (Svcs), technology (Tec), and utilities (Utes).

Briefly, Investor Glossary, an online investor primer, recently offered this description of dividend dog methodology: "...[I]nvented to find the 10 stocks of the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average with the highest yield (dividend / price) and invest equally in each, [t]he Dow dividend theory also requires that you repeat this process once a year.

Recently the author has supplemented Dow dividend dog theory picks from Yahoo sectors with one year

This article reports results from David Fish's Dividend Contenders Index calculated as of April 4, 2013 projecting gain results one year hence. Seeking Alpha reader requests prompted this first installment in a new series of index-specific articles reporting dividend yield plus price upside results for twelve popular stock indices: Dow 30; S&P 500; Aristocrats; Russell 1000; NASDAQ; NYSE International 100; Mergent Dividend Achievers; Champions; Contenders; Challengers; Carnevale's Power 25; Carnevale's Super 29.

An online tutorial for investors, Investor Glossary, recently offered this brief description of dividend dog methodology: "...[I]nvented to find the 10 stocks of the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average with the highest yield (dividend / price) and invest equally in each, [t]he Dow dividend theory also requires that you repeat this process once a year.

Below, the Arnold Dividend Contenders Index top dog selections for April were disclosed.

Dog

This is a companion article to my one the other day on Dividend Champions with yields that are 50% greater than that on a 10-year Treasury.

So many Champions (41 out of 105) qualified under that standard that I have raised the qualifying hurdle for Challengers from 150% of the Treasury yield to 200%.

As I write this, the yield on the 10-year Treasury is 1.74%. (Source = Bloomberg. A few days ago when I wrote the other article, it was 1.86%.) So a yield twice as much as the current 10-year Treasury would be 3.48%. For simplicity, I will use 3.5% as the cutoff.

So the stocks in the table below are Dividend Contenders with yields of 3.5% or more. Since these are Dividend Contenders, each has raised its annual dividend for at least 10 consecutive years.

The scorecard is that 56 Contenders out of 201 qualify.

In

In compiling the Dividend Champions list (found here) I get to see which companies are nearing the anniversaries of their previous dividend increases. Most of these firms raise their payout about the same time every year, but some companies go longer before boosting their dividends, and this can raise concerns about their streaks of increases.

Dividends in Doubt Series

This monthly series lists companies whose latest dividend increases might be considered "overdue" because it has been more than a year since the previous increase, a possible sign that their streaks of increases are in danger. Some firms regularly go more than a year between increases, so this is only an "early warning" sign that some of them may warrant concern. This month, I've sorted the Champions, Contenders, and Challengers together, in order of their most recent increase (PAY) dates. Except as noted below, the companies listed have until

This YChart/Morningstar (M/Y) report series was prompted by Seeking Alpha reader requests and began last month. It complements my reports of possible buy opportunities from eight major market sectors as listed by Yahoo Finance which I've posted since the fall of 2011.

So, responding to both the Seeking Alpha reader request and Ycharts.com migration to an eleven sector list, this report provided four actionable conclusions about top members of the Morningstar/YCharts (M/Y) sectors: basic materials; communication services; consumer cyclical; consumer defensive; energy; financial services; healthcare; industrials; real estate; technology; utilities. These sectors were all subjected to screening based on a once per year trading system triggered by yield supplemented with one year mean target price estimates from broker analysts.

An online investor primer, Investor Glossary, recently offered this brief description of dividend dog methodology: "...[I]nvented to find the 10 stocks of the 30-stock Dow

This article reported tantalizing takes from basic materials sector stocks tracked down using dividend dog methodology. Recently Investor Glossary, an online investor primer, offered up this description of dividend dog methodology: "The Dow dividend theory is a popular but simple investing strategy. There are several variations of the Dow dividend theory, but put simply, you find the 10 stocks of the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average with the highest yield (dividend / price) and invest equally in each. The Dow dividend theory also requires that you repeat this process once a year. The logic underlying the Dow dividend theory is that stocks with the highest yields have recently been the worst performers. (That's why the Dow dividend theory is also known as the Dogs of the Dow.) However, all the stocks in the Dow dividend

Triggered by yield, "Dogs of the Index," can be used as a once per year trading system to identify the best of the best dividend stocks. The dogs system can empower you as an investor with all the wisdom and knowledge of well-paid wizards of investment and publishing for free, as you select the highest yielding and lowest priced constituents in a collection of equities built by experts.

This article marked the February/March 2013 episode of ongoing work to answer the question, "what dividend stocks are good, better, best, bad or ugly?" The effort also heeded Yale professor Robert Shiller's observation: "People still place too much confidence in the markets and have too strong a belief that paying attention to the gyrations in their investments will someday make them rich, and so they do not make conservative preparations for possible bad outcomes." Hence this article graphically depicted those

Since my December 13, 2012, article titled "5 Stocks With Recent Intensive Insider Buying", the stocks that I featured have performed as follows:

In this article, I will feature three additional stocks that have seen intensive insider buying during the last 30 days. Intensive insider buying can be defined by the following three criteria:

1. The stock is purchased by three or more insiders within one month.
2. The stock is sold by no insiders in the month of intensive purchasing.
3. At least two purchasers increase their holdings by more than 10%.

1. Kayne Anderson MLP Investment Company (KYN) is a closed ended equity mutual fund launched and managed by KA Fund Advisors, LLC.

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Insider buying by insider (last 30

Yes, there has been a global malaise that began in 2008. (Much earlier, actually, but 2008 is when someone noticed that the drinks were being paid for with Monopoly money.) The US Federal Reserve had been spiking the punch bowl and refreshing it every time the drunks started to sober up. When the nation responsible for more world trade and consumption than any other gets a really bad hangover, it's tough for the rest of the crowd not to be affected.

Yet some were more responsible during this time than others. No Norwegian, Swedish or Finnish banks were deemed 'too-big-to-fail' and lavished with massive tax-payer bailouts. Canadian banks are still among the safest in the world and behaved during all this like...well, like "bankers" used to behave in the USA. Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Israel, The Netherlands, Singapore, and others are certainly affected by the hangover here, but they

The Dividend Champions spreadsheet and PDF have been updated through 2/28/13 and are available at http://dripinvesting.org/Tools/Tools.asp. Note that all references to Champions mean companies that have paid higher dividends for at least 25 straight years; Contenders have streaks of 10-24 years; Challengers have streaks of 5-9 years. "CCC" refers to the universe of Champions, Contenders, and Challengers.

Growth Continues

February, like January, was a month of subtle changes and continuing growth in the universe of dividend raisers. The biggest change was somewhat "hidden" from immediate view as the "Near-Challengers" - companies with four-year streaks of higher dividends - continued its rapid expansion, as listed in Appendix B on the Notes tab. Many of the companies that raised their dividends in 2010, 2011, and 2012 (after not doing so in 2009) began the year by extending their streaks to four years, so we'll likely see a wave of new

In compiling the Dividend Champions list (found here: http://dripinvesting.org/Tools/Tools.asp ) I get to see which companies are nearing the anniversaries of their previous dividend increases. Most of these firms raise their payout about the same time every year, but some companies go longer before boosting their dividends, and this can raise concerns about their streaks of increases.

Dividends in Doubt Series

This monthly series lists companies whose latest dividend increases might be considered "overdue" because it has been more than a year since the previous increase, a possible sign that their streaks of increases are in danger. Some firms regularly go more than a year between increases, so this is only an "early warning" sign that some of them may warrant concern. This month, I've sorted the Champions, Contenders, and Challengers separately, in order of their most recent increase (PAY) dates. Except as noted below, the companies listed

A once per year trading system triggered by yield, "Dogs of the Index," can be used to identify the best of the best dividend stocks. The dogs system can empower you as an investor with all the wisdom and knowledge of well-paid wizards of investment and publishing for free, as you select the highest yielding and lowest priced constituents in a collection of equities built by experts.

This article marked the December 2012/January 2013 episode of continual work to answer the question, "what dividend stocks are good, better, best, bad or ugly?" The effort also heeded Yale professor Robert Shiller's observation:

People still place too much confidence in the markets and have too strong a belief that paying attention to the gyrations in their investments will someday make them rich, and so they do not make conservative preparations for possible bad outcomes.

Hence this article graphically depicted those