The recession has been tough on companies that pay dividends. According to Standard and Poor’s, companies in the S&P 500 cut dividends -21% from 2008 levels. That’s the worst year for dividend cuts both on a dollar and percentage basis since 1938. Read More

Last week a colleague of mine put a clipping from The Wall Street Journal on my desk. To be honest, the headline of the article — “Last Year’s Dividend Slash Was $58 Billion” — caught me a little off guard. Read More

A 13% yield — these days or any other — is impressive for any company. Fewer than 50 out of the thousands listed on U.S. exchanges can match that payout. Such a robust yield is a show-stopper on its own,… Read More

A year ago, high-yield bonds were outcasts. The financial world braced for Armageddon, and investors fled riskier high-yield bonds in droves in anticipation of widespread defaults. Yield spreads — in this case, the difference between yields on high-yield bonds and yields on “AAA”-rated corporate bonds — soared to a record… Read More

It took a talking duck to make one of the largest insurance companies rise from obscurity to one of the most recognized names in the business. Aflac Inc. (NYSE: AFL) provides health insurance for 40 million people worldwide and has received numerous awards for being the best-managed… Read More

One thing more than any other makes searching for value difficult these days: Loans. The best way to search for discounted companies is to set up a screen that looks at net asset value — assets minus liabilities. (To see… Read More

Big Pharma needs some big ideas. If it can’t find them — and turn them into the next blockbuster drugs — then it will be in Big Trouble. The clock is always ticking for the nation’s drug makers. That’s because drug patents last only 20 years. The… Read More

Remember when big banks paid big dividends? Before the financial crisis Citigroup (NYSE: C) paid a quarterly dividend of $0.54; last quarter’s dividend was $0.01. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) paid a per-share $0.64 quarterly dividend as recently as late 2008; December’s quarterly dividend… Read More

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder — and I suppose that’s just as true in the financial world as anywhere else. For most, the Fed‘s unprecedented string of stimulative rate cuts couldn’t have been better timed. Read More

It was greeted as “an oddball security from Canada” when it debuted in December 2003. I’m speaking about one of the newest (and most lucrative) asset classes to hit Wall Street in recent years — enhanced income securities (EIS). The name… Read More