Stocks Going Ex Dividend the Second Week of February

Here is our latest update on the stock trading technique called ‘Buying Dividends,’ also commonly referred to as ‘Dividend Capture.’ 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, lots with market caps over $500 million, and yields over 2%. Here are a few examples showing the stock symbol, the ex-dividend date, the quarterly dividend amount, and annual yield.

Hexcel Corporation (HXL)	2/6/2026	0.11	0.85%
Sonic Corp. (SONC)	2/6/2031	0.14	1.87%
Xilinx, Inc. (XLNX)	2/6/2035	0.33	2.24%
Brink’s Company (BCO)	2/7/2017	0.1	0.93%
Discover Financial Services (DFS)	2/7/2020	0.3	1.70%
Starbucks Corporation (SBUX)	2/7/2029	0.25	1.58%

The additional ex-dividend stocks can be found here at wstnn.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 WStNN.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.

Stocks Going Ex Dividend the First Week of November

Here is our latest update on the stock trading technique called ‘Buying Dividends,’ also commonly referred to as ‘Dividend Capture.’ 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, lots with market caps over $500 million, and yields over 2%. Here are a few examples showing the stock symbol, the ex-dividend date, the dividend amount, and yield.

ADTRAN, Inc.	ADTN	11/1/2016	0.09	1.9%
Sierra Bancorp	BSRR	11/1/2016	0.12	2.6%
Cardinal Financial Corp	CFNL	11/1/2016	0.12	1.8%
Discover Financial Services	DFS	11/1/2016	0.30	2.0%
Franklin Electric	FELE	11/1/2016	0.10	1.1%
KB Home	KBH	11/1/2016	0.03	0.7%
Costco	COST	11/2/2016	0.45	1.1%

The additional ex-dividend stocks can be found here at wstnn.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 WStNN.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

Book now available: Stock Market Trivia Makes a Great Gift!

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.

Stocks Going Ex Dividend the First Week of August

Here is our latest update on the stock trading technique called 'Buying Dividends,' also commonly referred to as 'Dividend Capture.' 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, lots 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.

TD Ameritrade	AMTD	8/2/2016	2.2%
Berkshire Hills Bancorp	BHLB	8/2/2016	3.0%
Sierra Bancorp	BSRR	8/2/2016	2.7%
CONE Midstream Partners LP	CNNX	8/2/2016	5.8%
Discover Financial Services	DFS	8/2/2016	2.1%
Heritage Financial Corporation	HFWA	8/2/2016	2.8%
Matson, Inc.	MATX	8/2/2016	2.1%
Intel Corp	INTC	8/3/2016	3.0%
Johnson Controls	JCI	8/3/2016	2.5%

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

Book now available: Stock Market Trivia Makes a Great Gift!

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

Stocks of Super Bowl Advertisers

If you watched the Super Bowl yesterday, you would have noticed that the commercials took up almost as much time as the game. Many of the advertisers were produced by publicly traded companies.

Here is a selection of most of the major advertisers.

Budweiser	Anheuser-Busch InBev	BUD
Camry	Toyota	TM
Carnival	Carnival	CCL
Chevrolet	General Motors	GM
Coca Cola	Coca Cola	KO
Discover	Discover Financial	DFS
Disney	Disney	DIS
Dorritos	Pesico	PEP
Dove Men+	Unilever	UN
esurance	Allstate	ALL
Fiat	Fiat Chrysler	FCAY
Furious 7	Comcast	CMCSA
Intuit Turbotax	Intuit	INTU
Lexus	Toyota	TM
McDonald's	McDonald's	MCD
Microsoft	Microsoft	MSFT
Nissan	Nissan	NSANY
Pepsi	PepsiCo	PEP
Sketchers	Sketchers	SKX
T-Mobile	Deutsche Telekom	DTEGY
Tamiflu	Roche	RHHBY
Terminator	Viacom	VIA
Toyota	Toyota	TM
Weight Watchers	Weight Watchers	WTW
Xfinity	Comcast	CMCSA

Super Bowl is a registered trademark.

The Stock That's a Screaming Buy

First, let me get the disclosures and disclaimers out of the way. I own shares in the following stock. It is a 'screaming buy' for me. I am not recommending it as an investment for you as most of you who are aware of from previous articles, I never make any recommendations; however, occasionally I strongly suggest that you take a closer look a certain stocks.

For example, back on March 8, 2007, when I wrote the article ‘Why Amazon.com Stock could be Up Substantially by Year End’. The article listed twelve reasons why Amazon.com (AMZN) looked extremely favorable. The stock closed at 38.10 that day, started shooting up in April and never looked back, now trading around 120 per share.

So what is the stock I am writing about? It is eBay (EBAY), which closed at 21.77 on Friday. This is the company that owns PayPal, the online payment services company. Remember several years ago when eBay took a lot of grief for buying PayPal? Now look at it; it is driving the company.

PayPal's total payment volume, also known as TPV, jumped above $20 billion for the latest reported quarter. PayPal operates in 190 markets around the world, with over 80 million active accounts, supporting 24 different currencies.

The Merchant Services division of PayPal grew by an incredible 50% for the fourth quarter. So what is Merchant Services? This is essentially the checkout process that you see when you purchase something online, whether you are buying from a small, medium, or even large companies such as Wal Mart (WMT), 1-800-Flowers (FLWS), and Blue Nile (NILE). Usually you see a choice of VISA (V) or MasterCard (MA), and often in addition, Discover (DFS) and American Express (AXP).

A major bank or other financial institution would normally process this whole checkout procedure. But PayPal is moving in on this business in a big way. With PayPal handling it, consumers can still use a credit card to check out through PayPal even if they don't have or don't want to use a PayPal account. Smaller merchants are realizing that they have been paying a lot in monthly fees to some merchant service company in addition to being subject to a minimum monthly dollar amount in transactions. Whereas with a basic PayPal plan, no monthly fees and minimums.

So for the Merchant Services business of PayPal, the company's total payment volume grew at a rate of ten times the market growth rate for ecommerce in general, with the international services growing at 80% over last year, boosting non-US volume to 40% of PayPal's total TPV.

The international business is significant, with the cross border trade amounting to about one quarter of all of PayPal's total payment volume.

Oh year, I think the company also has some kind of an online auction business. But seriously, the eBay marketplace portion of the business is holding its own. Revenues for the eBay Marketplace increased by 15% for the latest quarter, with sold items growing by 11% worldwide over last year. Gross marketplace volume grew by almost 50% over last year in the Asia Pacific region. And in Europe, the number of live listings has practically doubled.

Same store sales growth for the fourth quarter for top-rated sellers grew by over 10% in the United States, 25% in Germany, and 35% in the UK.

There is even an eBay app for the iPhone, which has been downloaded practically 7 million times, which has generated more than $600 million in GMV during 2009, a 200% increase over the prior year.

I look at the eBay marketplace business a practically a utility. People will always have stuff they want to sell, and people will always be looking for stuff to buy. Whether we are in a recession or a booming economy, the eBay transactions will always continue.

As for eBay's other businesses, it has completed the sale of its 70% interest in Skype for about $1.9 billion. StubHub had a 54% fourth quarter increase in ticket sales over the same quarter last year. The classifieds business increased by 20% for the year. Revenue for Shopping.com, Rent.com and other businesses was up 7% for the latest quarter.

As for the company in general, revenues grew by 16% to $24 billion for the latest quarter, with non-GAAP earnings per share increasing by 9%. The company generated almost $600 million in free cash flow. And most important of all, the company is debt free. (I just love debt free companies.)

The company has $5.2 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and non-equity investments, amounting to about $4 in cash per share. The line of credit is paid off. Did I mention that the company has no debt?

The company reported financials on January 20. If the stock market and the economy had been stronger at the time, I think eBay would have performed better over the last few weeks. So if you are looking for a company to do your homework on, take a very close look at eBay.

Author owns AMZN and EBAY.

By Fred Fuld at Stockerblog.com

Credit Cards May Bail Out the Holiday Season

Credit cards have been the source of the seed capital for many businesses that started off small and have since become extremely successful. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google (GOOG) supposedly started the company with credit card advances. Hedge fund manager Bruce Kovner and director, producer, writer, and actor Spike Lee also got their start with the help of credit cards, according to Wikipedia.

A variety of credit cards are now available and ubiquitous. And I don't just mean different interest rates and fee structures, or even personalized cards. You can get cars that smell with 90 choices of aromas.

For the average consumer, credit cards may not help with the funding of a business, but the cards will sure help out with holiday shopping. Every time there is a transaction, the card company receives a fee, and although the number and quantity of transactions may not be as much as previous, more robust years, activity this holiday season should be better than last year.

Here are some credit card companies that you might want to charge ahead with.

Discover Financial Services (DFS) is an issuer of the Discover Card, the third largest credit card brand in the U.S, as measured by cardholders. The Discover Card was originally developed by Sears, many years ago. Discover has a forward P/E of 20,has $10.8 billion in cash versus only $1.8 billion in total debt, and pays a small dividend of 0.5%.

American Express (AXP) is the financial conglomerate that offers the famous American Express card, travellers checks, gift cards, gift checks, prepaid cards and merchant services. They also offer banking, investment and travel services. The stock's forward P/E is 17,has $18.6 billion in cash and $55 billion in total debt, and it yields about 1.8%.

MasterCard (MA) went public in May of 2006. Its card brands include MasterCard, MasterCard Electronic, Cirrus, and Maestro. It has a forward P/E of 18, $2.95 billion in cash versus $22 million in total debt, and a small yield of 0.2%.

VISA (V), which also recently went public, has a forward PE of 19, $4.8 billion in cash with only a nominal $56 million in total debt, and pays a 0.6% yield.

Although a smaller play in the credit card industry, Barclays (BCS), the British financial services company, offers banking services, investment banking, and credit cards, primarily the Barclaycard. The stock has a P/E of 7 and a yield of 0.3%.

The biggest alternative to credit cards is Paypal, owned by eBay (EBAY), the online marketplace and auction place. eBay has a forward PE of 15, $3.16 billion in cash versus a picayune $200 million in total debt. They don't pay a dividend.

Maybe your portfolio can get a charge out of credit card companies. Don't leave your portfolio without one.

By the way, if you like companies with lots of cash and low or no debt, check out the free downloadable Excel databases of high cash, low debt stocks at wsnn.com.

Author owns EBAY.

By Fred Fuld at Stockerblog.com