With near-zero interest rates likely to persist for two more years, some investors are bullish on gold and high-yielding stocks, while shares of some solid companies out of favor with the market are still relatively cheap, Barron's reported Sunday. In the third installment covering the magazine's 2012 investors roundtable, T. Rowe Price Chairman and investment chief Brian Rogers said he seeks companies that have performed well but are ignored, including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Emerson Electric Co, Ingersoll-Rand, Microsoft Corp, Juniper Networks and Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Abby Joseph Cohen, head of Goldman Sachs' Global Markets Institute, says investors should look for companies paying dividends and buying back stack, which boosts effective yields to 7 percent or 8 percent. She also forecasts a good but not great year for the U.S. economy, while global growth will slip as Europe retrenches and China slows. Her top picks included Exxon Mobil Corp, Boeing Co , Brazil's Embraer SA, American Express Co and Edwards Lifesciences Corp. Delphi Management founder Scott Black projects growth, not recession this year in the United States.

Source: Economic Times

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The most obvious takeaways from the release of AT&T's (NYSE: T ) fourth-quarter earnings are that the $4.2 billion penalty it had to pay T-Mobile for failing to complete their merger was extremely painful, and that AT&T chairman, CEO, and president Randall Stephenson has a very dim view of the Federal Communications Commission when it comes to its ability to allocate wireless spectrum in a fair manner.

AT&T did manage to post $2 billion in free cash flow for the period, bringing full year free cash flow to $13.5 billion, enough for the company to increase its dividend for the 28th consecutive year. But the big takeaway here, as CEO Stephenson might put it, is that the three most important things that AT&T must consider for success in 2012 and beyond are … spectrum, spectrum, and spectrum.

Source: Motley Fool

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Dividend stocks are not cool. They are not exciting. And they do not make for good conversation topics at parties. They're like the trombone player from high school who never had a date to prom. In fact, come to think of it, the only thing dividend stocks are good for is making money. And potentially lots of it. So if you're not interested in making money, then proceed no further. There's nothing glamorous to see here. But if you clicked on this article because you're greedy and want to get rich from investing.

If you take only two things away from this article, make it these principles. First, stocks that pay higher dividends have historically outperformed stocks that pay lower dividends. Second, companies that pay more in dividends typically tend to experience higher earnings growth in the future.

Source: Motley Fool

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Last year's stock-market goats are this year's heroes, and vice versa. But investors betting that the reversal will persist should tread carefully, analysts say. While 2011 was tumultuous, this year has been eerily calm. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Market Volatility Index, or VIX, has dropped about 20% this year, to 18, the lowest level since July.

The change has been particularly painful for investors who sought comfort in the market's safest stocks. Dividend payers have gone nowhere this year, while companies that don't pay dividends have jumped 9.5%. After gaining 15% in 2011, the steady stocks that make up the S&P 500 Low Volatility Index have dropped 0.5% this year, trailing their riskier counterparts in the S&P High Beta Index by more than 12 percentage points.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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Investors are getting crushed by today's low interest rates, which Federal Reserve officials now say will last at least through late 2014. But there are alternatives to one-year CDs paying 1 percent or 10-year Treasuries, which yield just less than 2.1 percent annually. Several Chicago-area stocks are paying dividends three to four times that Treasury return, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

“Stocks have become more appealing, and many investors have now built dividend-paying stocks into their portfolios,” says Cori Johnson, a portfolio manager at Chicago-based Nuveen Investments. In Illinois, Chicago-based Exelon Corp. and Integrys Energy Group Inc. are among the companies with the highest yields. Utilities long have been considered havens for “widows and orphans” because many pay generous dividends to offset slow growth prospects.

Source: Chicago Business

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