The Latest on the Gisele Bündchen Stock Index

Gisele Bunchen is a Brazilian supermodel, celebrity endorser and spokesperson for numerous products of many publicly traded companies. She also happens to be the wife of American football star Tom Brady. Gisele is the top earning model according to Forbes Magazine. I have tracked the companies that Gisele has connections with and built those stocks into the form of a stock index, in order to compare Gisele's stocks with the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The following graph shows the return for both since 2007:

The Gisele Index is still outperforming the Dow Jones Industrial Average by a wide margin. The Gisele Index is up an outstanding 79% since January 2007, whereas the Dow was up only 22%. over the same period of time. I have been maintaining the same stocks in the portfolio to keep it consistent over time.

Since 2007, her index was up 79%, since 2008 up 77%, and since 2009, up 111%. Even in the last year and a half, since January 2011, the Gisele Index was up 44.6%.

The stocks in her index include:

Volkswagon (VLKAY) TV commercial spokesperson

Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. (RL) Advertising campaign face for Ralph Lauren, owned by Polo Ralph Lauren Corp.

Telefonica Brasil [Vivo Participacoes] (VIV) Celebrity endorsement - largest mobile phone service provider in Brazil and in South America

News Corp. (NWSA) Starred in the comedy, Taxi, in her movie debut, and The Devil Wears Prada, both produced by 20th Century Fox, a division of News Corp.

Procter & Gamble (PG) Celebrity endorsement, increased Pantene's sale in Brazil by 40%.

Disney (DIS) Celebrity endorsement - appeared in the 'Year of a Million Dreams' celebration photoshoot

For a free list of stocks in the Gisele Stock Index, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Other celebrity stock indexes you may be interested in include the Heidi Klum Stock Index, the Eva Longoria Stock Index, the Angelina Jolie Stock Index, the Jessica Alba Stock Index, the Nicole Kidman Stock Index, and the Supermodels Stock Indices.

Assumptions:
The Gisele Index is a price-weighted index, similar to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It includes reinvested dividends.

Disclosure: Author owned DIS and NWSA at the time the article was written. No celebrity endorsement expressed or implied.

By Fred Fuld at Stockerblog.com

Stocks Going Ex Dividend the Fourth Week of June

  Here is our latest update on the stock trading technique called 'Buying Dividends'. This is the process of buying stocks before the ex dividend date and selling the stock shortly after the ex date at about the same price, yet still being entitled to the dividend. This technique generally works only in bull markets, and can work in flat or choppy markets, but you need to avoid the technique during bear markets.

In order to be entitled to the dividend, you have to buy the stock before the ex-dividend date, and you can't sell the stock until after the ex date. The actual dividend may not be paid for another few weeks. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has compiled a downloadable and sortable list of the stocks going ex dividend in the near future. The list contains many dividend paying companies, many with market caps over $500 million, and yields over 2%. Here are a few examples showing the stock symbol, the ex-dividend date, and the yield.

The Toro Company (TTC) 6/24/2013 1.2%

Cypress Semiconductor (CY) 6/25/2013 4.0%

Getty Realty Corp (GTY) 6/25/2013 3.7%

Healthcare Trust of America, Inc. (HTA) 6/25/2013 4.9%

International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) 6/25/2013 1.7%

ProAssurance Corporation (PRA) 6/25/2013 2.0%

Chad Therapeutics Inc. (CTU) 6/26/2013 6.8%

Centex Corp. (CTX) 6/26/2013 6.5%

Curtiss-Wright Corp (CW) 6/26/2013 1.1%

Dillard's (DDS) 6/26/2013 0.2%

Danaher Corp (DHR) 6/26/2013 0.2%

Dow Chemical (DOW) 6/26/2013 3.7%

The additional ex-dividend stocks can be found at wsnn.com. (If you have been to the website before, and the latest link doesn't show up, you may have to empty your cache.) If you like dividend stocks, you should check out some of the other high yield stock lists at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com or WSNN.com. Most of the lists are free.

Dividend definitions:

Declaration date: the day that the company declares that there is going to be an upcoming dividend.

Ex-dividend date: the day on which if you buy the stock, you would not be entitled to that particular dividend; or the first day on which a shareholder can sell the shares and still be entitled to the dividend.

Monthly Dividend Stock List
Record date: the day when you must be on the company's books as a shareholder to receive the dividend. The ex-dividend date is normally set for stocks at two business days before the record date.

Payment date: the day on which the dividend payment is actually made, which can be as long at two months after the ex date.

Book now available: Buying Dividends Revised and Expanded
Don't forget to reconfirm the ex-dividend date with the company before implementing this technique.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com

Absence of Ownership

Guest Article: Absence of Ownership
By Robert A.G. Monks, Author of Citizens DisUnited: Passive Investors, Drone CEOs, and the Corporate Capture of the American Dream

We have a problem with absentee owners. Remember several years ago when, under the Clinton Administration, there was pressure on absentee fathers to bear responsibility for caring for their children? We have the same problem with corporations. But in this case there are no parents at all. No oversight and no one making sure that corporations and management act sanely and responsibly.

When corporations were owned by flesh and blood individuals the experience was, generally speaking, that flesh and blood individuals acted the same way with respect to their corporations they acted in their own life, and that they had concerns for the externalities of the corporation and they had concerns for its long-term implications.

Ownership has become more diffuse and corporations now have only a nominal accountability to any identifiable ownership. By identifiable owner I mean a shareholder or a group of shareholders who are willing to accept the responsibility of being stewards and monitoring the functioning of the corporation. It's a case where the word "owner" communicates an incorrect and even harmful impression. Traditionally, the shareholder register consisted of a group of the names of individuals who owned stock in that corporation. As a practical matter today, it's almost beyond belief that you would find the name of an individual on a shareholder register.

In fact, more than 70% of all publicly traded shares in the top U.S. corporations are held by institutional owners and managed by trustees -- legal creatures with the obligation to responsibly manage trust property in the interests of and for the exclusive benefit of plan participants and beneficiaries.

Most of us who have ownership in corporations these days -- many of us through retirement plans, 401 (k) plans, IRAs, mutual funds and things like that -- don't really "own" stock in the sense we own things like our house or car. There are many different types of shareholders and the interests of the different parties are not compatible. Ira Millstein came up with a very appropriate metaphor describing share owners as being like the animals in a zoo. Yes, they're all animals but my goodness, they are more different than they are alike.

So, without traditional owners who run the company we must rely on large managing shareholders like pension plans or trustees of funds and endowments to take on the role of owners. But they haven't. These are the absentee owners. And without owners, corporations run amok -- like children without a chaperone. There's no accountability and decisions are made without regard for consequences. That's why in my new book, Citizens DisUnited: Passive Investors, Drone CEOs and the Capture of the American Dream, I call these ownerless entities corporate drones:

They are analogous to the military vehicles that have enormous power and capacity for good and ill. They insulate operators from risk while casting vast externalities and costs onto society.

Want an example? Look at the large banking institutions in the mortgage bubble and financial crisis. We don't even know who owns them but we can certainly name the CEOs. Nearly all of them came out of the crisis quickly, made profits and gave bonuses to upper management while the rest of society is still struggling with underwater mortgages and unemployment. Who bailed the banks out? We did. Their problem. Their fault. Our responsibility.

This is externalizing at its core: putting the problems and responsibilities of corporate operations off onto society while keeping the benefits and profits for themselves. I think this raises the question as to the appropriateness of corporations that do not have an identifiable owner. It has become increasingly clear to me that it's very dangerous to have these ownerless corporations -- drone corporations -- and that there needs to be a way of dealing with the problem of the risks that they present. The author Chrystia Freeland said that U.S., "has created a system of capitalism without capitalists, of private sector companies whose owners have abdicated responsibility for the companies that belong to them." Someone has to take the wheel.

So, about now you're asking who can do this. Who has enough shares, enough clout and enough status to lead the charge? This is what I lay out in the book: foundations and university endowments have particular missions to improve the lot of human beings on earth -- and I believe this implies that they also have responsibility to be stewards of the companies they own. The large foundations like the Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Packard Foundation and the university endowments like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford have enough shares and enough standing to be leaders. Along with the large pension funds and mutual funds, these are the groups that manage a vast percentage of our nation's wealth.

CalPers over $220b under mgmt (public pension fund).1
Harvard with $30+ billion and Yale with $16.7 billion (university endowments).2
Gates Foundation with $34.6 billion and Ford Foundation with $10.9 billion (Large foundations and private charities).3
Vanguard with $1.6 trillion under management and State Street Corporation with $23 trillion (Large Mutual Funds).4

At the end of the day, we don't need everybody in all categories of ownership to join in. We just need a few of these organizations to work together so that every corporation has at least one group of effective functional motivated owners to act as stewards and provide that element of accountability that is essential for corporations to exist harmoniously in a democratic society. As Warren Buffett has said, "If you had the top five institutional investors, and when they saw something outrageous the five of them spoke together . . . the world would change."5

1. Tomio Geron, "CalPERS Returns 1% for Fiscal Year," Forbes, July 16, 2012.
2. Rob Kozlowksi, "Endowment execs top pay list for tax-exempt institutions," Pensions & Investments, November 7, 2011.
3. "Top Funders: Top 100 U.S. Foundations by Asset Size," Foundation Center, April 17, 2013.
4. "Vanguard Group Is Increasing Its Positions In These Stocks," SeekingAlpha.com, February 3, 2012, and "State Street Corporation at Goldman Sachs Financial Service Conference Transcript," AlacraStore.com, (accessed January 11, 2013).
5. Nell Minow,"An Interview With Warren Buffett," GMIRatings video on YouTube, part six of nine, September 2010, (accessed January 11, 2013).

© 2013 Robert A.G. Monks, author of Citizens DisUnited: Passive Investors, Drone CEOs, and the Corporate Capture of the American Dream. Reprinted with permission of the publicist.

Author Bio
Robert A.G. Monks, author of Citizens DisUnited: Passive Investors, Drone CEOs, and the Corporate Capture of the American Dream and 8 other books, is a pioneering shareholder activist and corporate governance adviser. He has written widely about shareholder rights & responsibility, corporate impact on society and global corporate issues.

Stocks Going Ex Dividend the Third Week of June

  Here is our latest update on the stock trading technique called 'Buying Dividends'. This is the process of buying stocks before the ex dividend date and selling the stock shortly after the ex date at about the same price, yet still being entitled to the dividend. This technique generally works only in bull markets, and can work in flat or choppy markets, but you need to avoid the technique during bear markets.

In order to be entitled to the dividend, you have to buy the stock before the ex-dividend date, and you can't sell the stock until after the ex date. The actual dividend may not be paid for another few weeks. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has compiled a downloadable and sortable list of the stocks going ex dividend in the near future. The list contains many dividend paying companies, many with market caps over $500 million, and yields over 2%. Here are a few examples showing the stock symbol, the ex-dividend date, and the yield.

Symantec Corporation (SYMC) 6/17/2013 2.5%

Tupperware (TUP) 6/17/2013 3.0%

Las Vegas Sands (LVS) 6/18/2013 2.4%

Solar Capital Ltd. (SLRC) 6/18/2013 10.0%

Safeway (SWY) 6/18/2013 3.4%

Sypris Solutions, Inc. (SYPR) 6/18/2013 2.4%

Tiffany & Co. (TIF) 6/18/2013 1.7%

Xcel Energy (XEL) 6/18/2013 3.8%

Advance Auto Parts (AAP) 6/19/2013 0.3%

The additional ex-dividend stocks can be found at wsnn.com. (If you have been to the website before, and the latest link doesn't show up, you may have to empty your cache.) If you like dividend stocks, you should check out some of the other high yield stock lists at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com or WSNN.com. Most of the lists are free.

Dividend definitions:

Declaration date: the day that the company declares that there is going to be an upcoming dividend.

Ex-dividend date: the day on which if you buy the stock, you would not be entitled to that particular dividend; or the first day on which a shareholder can sell the shares and still be entitled to the dividend.

Monthly Dividend Stock List
Record date: the day when you must be on the company's books as a shareholder to receive the dividend. The ex-dividend date is normally set for stocks at two business days before the record date.

Payment date: the day on which the dividend payment is actually made, which can be as long at two months after the ex date.

Book now available: Buying Dividends Revised and Expanded
Don't forget to reconfirm the ex-dividend date with the company before implementing this technique.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com

Final Result of the Warren Buffett Lunch Auction

The Warren Buffett Power Lunch Auction through eBay (EBAY) was completed last week. This was the auction to have lunch with Warren Buffett, head of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) (BRK-B), along seven friends. The auction was to benefit the GLIDE Foundation in San Francisco and its programs.

In case you missed it, the results are in. The lunch sold for $1,000,100.00, with 106 bids. Bidding started out at $25,000.

Unfortunately, this lunch didn't pull in as much as last year, when the auction was hammered at $3,456,789. What is interesting is that there were the same number of bids last year as there were this year.

As a matter of fact, the high bid this year didn't even come close to many of the previous years. In 2011, the Warren Buffett lunch went for $2,345,678, in 2010, the Buffett lunch sold for $2.6 million, and even in 2008, the lunch was auctioned off at $2 million.

Not sure why it is so low this year. Any thoughts?

A Smart Investment Strategy: Invest Like Warren Buffet

Known as the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet is the platinum standard by which investors only hope to measure themselves against. His knowledge of investing and the stock market has amazed those who have watched him make money no matter what the economy is like. His holding company of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) (BRK-B) has what is known as the most valuable stock ever traded on the New York Stock Exchange and investors everywhere clamor to any news of his buying or selling of stock.

His portfolio is always public and if one were to examine it, you would see that his stocks are a reflection of his core attitude towards America and its values. He has always stated that America is still the best place in the world for a baby to be born and he has always tried to invest in the American companies that best demonstrate integrity, solid fundamentals, and a defensive strategy against the pitfalls of the economy. He likens his strategy to that of a castle with a wide moat as defense. The companies that have an impervious defense and a strong history of dividends can be found in Berkshire Hathaway. According to the database of Berkshire Hathaway stocks at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, over 75% of the Warren Buffett companies pay dividends.

Although most of the companies in his portfolio are US based, they have a strong international presence, companies such as International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) which trades at 14 times earnings and yields 1.8%, and American Express (AXP), which trades at 19 times earnings and pays a dividend rate of 1.2%.

People often wonder how his investing strategy works and how he manages to make so much money. It’s pretty simple actually and he even tells you what he does. When everyone is selling, he buys, and when everyone is buying, he sells. It’s always been said that in order to make money in the stock market you buy low and sell high. In examining Warren Buffet’s strategy, he does exactly this. The fact that many people do not follow his investing advice is why his simple method seems so mysterious. Maybe Wall Street investors should actually take note of his advice and spend less time trying to make a quick dollar from trading and spend more time investing in a long term based ideology.

For a free list of stocks that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Disclosure: Author didn't own any of the above at the time the article was written.