Trading Ideas

Some of the world’s best investors stick to dividend portfolios. They know that a steady stream of income is a top wealth building strategy. And finding the best deals with the most reliable companies is vital. But what happens when a reliable company is saddled with debt? Today, we’re going to review AT&T’s dividend safety and how it will pay off its debt.
Business Overview and Highlights
AT&T is a $279 billion business based out of Dallas, Texas. The company employs 268,200 people. Last year AT&T pulled in $171 billion in sales and that breaks down to $637,000 per employee.
The company operates …read more […]

Economic inequality is a hot topic right now – especially when some Americans have been able to achieve extensive income and wealth compared with others.
Today, Alexander Green explains why there are good reasons for this disparity and what lagging individuals can do to catch up.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been discussing the issue of economic inequality, how to think about it and what to do about it.
It’s quite true that some Americans have more income and wealth than others.
But is this unfair? Think about it.
Is it wrong for a doctor to make more than a nurse, a pilot to …read more […]

Earnings season…
You either love it… or you hate it.
As this latest earnings season comes to a close, we highlighted a trade in The War Room on semiconductor design company Ambarella (Nasdaq: AMBA) that I’d like to share with you today.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again – I utilize a very specific, precise selection methodology in The War Room that allows you to profit off an earnings report – no matter which way the stock moves.
Sure, this tactic gives up some of the explosive gains you could get by betting on the right move. But at the same …read more […]

Financial analysts crunch a seemingly infinite amount of data in an attempt to divine the future of the market.
But as Nicholas Vardy explains today, their long-term predictions often miss the mark.

“Prediction is hard, especially about the future.”
– Yogi Berra
The Greeks turned to the Oracle of Delphi. The Romans interpreted animal entrails. Today, Wall Street analysts crunch endless data to divine the future.
In today’s tradition, Boston money management firm GMO just published its annual outlook for all major asset classes for the seven years ahead.
Two predictions stood out.
First, GMO expects emerging market stocks to rise an average of 5.2% per year …read more […]

Investors are always on the hunt for the next big thing. And in cannabis, we may have already found ours…
Latin America.
The countries here are home to more than 620 million consumers.
And Latin America is shaping up to be one of the fastest-growing cannabis markets in the world. Projections have it exploding from $125 million in 2018 to nearly $13 billion by 2028.
This provides tremendous opportunities for first movers. And the leader here is Khiron Life Sciences Corp. (OTC: KHRNF).
Based out of Colombia, Khiron has one of the largest grow operations in Latin America. It has a 1.9 million-square-foot facility in …read more […]

The Pepsico dividend is not flashy. It’s not grabbing the big headlines. You’re not going to confuse it with pop stars like Camilla Cabello or Shawn Mendes walking down a red carpet, paparazzi cameras blinding.
But what it is, is dependable. Reliable. Steady.
You can count on it for sustained and consistent excellence.

And that’s worth a heck of a lot in the world of dividend investing.
Is PepsiCo right for your stock portfolio? Perhaps.
But before we try to answer that question, let’s dive into what makes PepsiCo’s dividend so special.
All About PepsiCo Inc.

Ahhhhh, Pepsi.
Most likely when you think about …read more […]

The last time I wrote about AGNC Investment Corp. (Nasdaq: AGNC), I called it the worst dividend safety rating I’d ever seen.
I concluded that AGNC cutting its dividend seemed like a sure thing.
Less than a year later, AGNC lowered its dividend 11%, to $0.16 per share from $0.18. It was the eighth time it had slashed the dividend in the past 10 years.
Is dividend cut No. 9 coming soon?
If history repeats? Yes.
The good news is that AGNC no longer has the worst dividend safety rating I’ve ever seen. It’s not good, but it’s no longer the worst.
The one positive is …read more […]

Peloton Interactive could be next up in the 2019 IPO queue. After filing its S1 paperwork on August 27, many expect the company to go public in the coming weeks. With a Peloton IPO on the horizon, let’s check in on the innovative fitness startup.
What is Peloton?
Peloton offers stationary bikes and treadmills with large displays that stream fitness classes. But according to CEO John Foley that description would be selling the company short. “Peloton sells happiness,” he said recently.
Peloton, much like WeWork, is looking to bolster its brand ahead of its IPO.
In the first section of Peloton’s IPO paperwork, the …read more […]

A reader, Eton, asks, “Do you have any recommendations on facial recognition startups, or thoughts on them?”
I usually save questions like this for our Mailbag. But this is such a big and basic issue, I didn’t want to wait.
Facial recognition technology is spreading like wildfire. I first started to use it when my Google Photos app made it available a couple of years ago. It makes searching for people in your photo albums quick and easy. Apple uses facial recognition to enable users to unlock their smartphones. Banks employ it to verify transactions. And supermarkets use it to try to …read more […]

Utilities across the country are increasingly turning to wind when installing new power sources. It’s not only cheap, it’s green too.
In 2018, utilities chose wind for new generating capacity 21% of the time. And over the last 10 years, wind power made up 28% of all new U.S. generating capacity.
With 96,433 megawatts (MW) installed, the U.S. is now the second-largest market for wind power. Why is wind becoming so popular here?
With utilities, it’s all about the cost of power. And the price for wind power has been dropping like a stone in a vacuum.
In fact, wind power is now cheaper …read more […]

Many of us have a lot to be thankful for – food, shelter, health and wealth – but sometimes it’s not easy to count our blessings.
Today, Mark Ford shares how we can foster gratitude for the little – and big – things that make life wonderful.

I have a friend who is battling prostate cancer. Despite consistently bad medical reports, he spends no time cursing his fate, complaining about his circumstances or expressing gloominess of any kind.
He is upbeat, energetic, full of good ideas and humbly solicitous of my health and happiness.
I asked him recently how he manages to keep such …read more […]

One of the most important things you can do to improve your investment returns might be to overcome your bias against simplicity.
As Nicholas Vardy explains today, many investors are drawn toward complex solutions, but these are often not the best.

“Simplicity is the hallmark of truth – we should know better, but complexity continues to have a morbid attraction. When you give [an explanation] that is crystal clear… your audience feels cheated and leaves the lecture hall commenting to each other: ‘That was rather trivial, wasn’t it?’ The sore truth is that complexity sells better.”
– Edsger Dijkstra, pioneer in computing science
Last …read more […]

Trump tweets… and the market falls.
Two days later, he tweets again and the market rises.
Trade wars, earnings, economic data and a wide variety of other factors all affect the market and can cause sudden sharp moves up and down.
That volatility can be scary for investors, who sometimes feel like the rug has been pulled out from under them when the market tanks for seemingly unimportant reasons.
Long-Term Trends in Stock Market Volatility
Markets go up over the long term. We know that, and that’s why I preach owning stocks for years. But to get to the promised land of strong long-term returns, …read more […]

Few people cheer for the bears… especially if you’re from Green Bay.
But during the past century of trading, investors have been hit with more than 30 bear markets.
Pot stock investors in particular have endured several bear markets already. And we’ve been slogging through the longest one in the sector’s nascent history.
But if those bears start to point to a pattern we can profit from, that might be something worth cheering for…

Since March 2017, the North American Marijuana Index is up 26.3%.
That’s not bad… but it’s not great either.
That means pot stocks have returned roughly the same as the Dow Jones …read more […]

Bitcoin is getting more eco-friendly.
Despite more computing power being dedicated to bitcoin mining, less electricity is required to fuel it. Data from Statista shows that bitcoin mining energy consumption was 69.79 terawatt hours per year as of July 2019. In July 2018, it was 71.12 terawatts. And the current hash rate (the measure of computing power it takes to process bitcoin transactions) is almost 60% higher than it was back then.
There are two net positives here. One is that bitcoin’s hash rate keeps climbing. As we’ve written before, that’s a sign that bitcoin adoption is going strong and the network …read more […]