Kevin B.

Ten Top Value Traps with Unreasonably High Dividends

NAT's stock has not plummeted - held up quite well actually. FYI

Ten Top Value Traps with Unreasonably High Dividends

FYI - NAT has ZERO debt on its balance sheet, a payout ratio of over 100%, 45 straight quarters of dividend payouts and increasign them, along with a blance sheet that can withstand the tough economic times. I think you could do some more research on the financial statments and history before labeling a stock as a value trap. Even if they cut their dividend down by 50% thats still about 10%+. Not exaclty sure what your looking at, but the frieght rates have bottomed and this is teh best time to be buying NAT - which is the best shipper due to its financial condition. They just had a new shares issued to take advantage of super cheap building prices on freights - this sounds positive not negative along with ZERO debt!! I bet you dont own one stock that has zero debt - tough to find and a must own. Is it ironic that investment banks are going to start buying freights instead of trading oil? I dont think so.

India Faces a Long Bear Market - Barron's

Ill keep taking my tax free (ROTH) distributions from the IFN and let you know how much its worth in 20 years. Ingore the noice from big brokerage/research firms. Odds are I will have a disgusting large sum of money. India's GDP will be growing far faster than the U.S. So call me silly but I will take growth, distributions and upside potential any day. Especially after the recent world market declines.

ConocoPhillips: More Than Just a Great Stock

Corelations did not converge at 1. If you notice for the two year holding peroid the DJ-AGI out performed the S&P500. So in terms of portfolio diversification by holding the DJ-AGI you beat the market which is mentioned in the article by "When the DJ-AGI is added to a balanced portfolio of equities and bonds, the Sharpe Ratio will increase due to the DJ-AGI having a similar volatility to the S&P 500, as well as higher returns than bonds. The exposure and diversification in commodities along with reducing a portfolio's market risk and increased returns comparable to bonds will create an outstanding complement to any portfolio"

Just because things fall in price together does not mean they are correlated at 1. Nothing is perfectly correlated - ther will always be some error in statistics. You would be up on the market by about 8%+ with a 50% - 50% mix of stocks and the DJ-Index. So diversification is quite benneficial.

ConocoPhillips: More Than Just a Great Stock

Well i dont think debt is of great concern for these oil giants. They generate enough revenues/profits in any given quarter to cover the entire debt on the balance sheet. Debt could be due to growth and expansion of the company - XOM and CVX are at least twice the size in market cap. So the growth of COP would be in direct correlation with higher debt. Debt is not always a bad thing. Its only bad if you cant pay it off - in which COP will have no problems.

ConocoPhillips: More Than Just a Great Stock

See the second chart - since Oct 2008 COP has de-pegged itsself in a range from XOM and CVX. If they were trading in correlation after Oct 2008 they would be trading along side eachother - which they are not. Thus a potential opportunity refrenced in the article.