Valentine’s Day Stock Portfolio

Valentine's Day is today. I hope you didn't forget. Several stocks may benefit from this day of love, including those in the business of flowers, chocolate, jewelry, greeting cards, and gift wrap. 

 If you don't have time to pick them up yourself, you can order flowers from 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. (FLWS). The comany is the largest publicly traded company of flowers, plus sells cookies, cakes, candy, wines, gift baskets, and other gifts for your valentine. The stock trades at 20.1 times forward earnings. Earnings for the latest quarter were up a little over 1% on a year-over-year basis.

All valentines enjoy the gift of chocolate. The Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory Inc. (RMCF), based in Durango, Colorado creates and sells various types of chocolate candy including caramels, creams, mints, and truffles. The company was founded in 1981, has over 300 franchise locations. The forward price to earnings ratio is 11.4. Rocky Mountain pays a very generous dividend yield of 4.38%. What valentine doesn't like jewelry. 

Tiffany (TIF), founded in 1837, is one of the top jewelry companies in the world, with more than 60 U.S. stores and numerous international locations. Something like a Platinum Pear Cut Emerald And Round Diamond Pendant would make a nice gift (price is only $120,443). The stock trades at 19.1 times forward earnings. This stock also pays a dividend, with a yield of 2.11%.

CSS Industries Inc. (CSS) markets gift wrap, gift bags, boxed greeting cards, gift tags, tissue paper, decorations, and decorative ribbons and bows. The stock trades at 11.9 times forward earnings, and pays a favorable yield of 3.17%.

For more stocks that could increase sales from the Valentine experience, such as candy and chocolate stocks, check out the free lists here at WSTNN.com. The lists can be downloaded, sorted, and updated. 

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

 By Stockerblog.com

Stocks Going Ex Dividend the Fourth 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.

Cabot Corporation (CBT)	2/22/2017	0.30	1.94%
Carnival Corporation (CCL)	2/22/2017	0.35	2.39%
Carnival Corporation (CUK)	2/22/2017	0.35	2.39%
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)	2/24/2017	0.80	2.72%

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.

The Latest Top Selling Real Estate Books

With a bullish run of over eight years in the stock market, you may have been taking profits and looking for other investments to diversify your portfolio, such as real estate.  Or maybe you already invest in real estate, and want to avoid pitfalls Have you ever wanted to try flipping homes and didn’t know how to begin? Here are some recent top selling books on real estate investing, broken down by category. Happy reading!

Flipping

The Book on Flipping Houses: How to Buy, Rehab, and Resell Residential Properties 

FLIP: How to Find, Fix, and Sell Houses for Profit

The Complete Guide to Flipping Properties

Forclosures

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buying Foreclosures, 2nd Edition

Buy & Rent Foreclosures: 3 Million Net Worth, 22,000 Net Per Month, In 7 Years…You can too!

Foreclosure Investing For Dummies Buying Real Estate Foreclosures

Rental Properties & Property Management

The Complete Guide to Investing in Rental Properties

The Effective Landlord: How Owners and Property Managers Can Attract Better Tenants, Raise Rents, and Boost Their Bottom Line in Any Market

Real Estate Investing Jump Start

Rental Property Millionaire: Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide for Newbies

The Real Estate Rookie’s Guide to Property Investment

Magic Mirror Investing: Your Complete Guide to Property Management

Real Estate Investing: Own, Rent and Time Well Spent: How To Create Passive Income From Property Investment

Short Sale Investing

Short-Sale Pre-Foreclosure Investing: How to Buy “No-Equity” Properties Directly from the Bank — at Huge Discounts

Cashing in on Pre-foreclosures and Short Sales: A Real Estate Investor’s Guide to Making a Fortune Even in a Down Market

Negotiation

Finding the Uncommon Deal: A Top New York Lawyer Explains How to Buy a Home For the Lowest Possible Price

Real Estate Taxation

Practical Guide to Real Estate Taxation, 2017

Hotel Investing

Hotels and Resorts: An investor’s guide

Top Untaxed Foreign Earnings Stocks

The United States has one of the highest tax rates in the world for corporations. In the past, the U.S. Government might have thought that this was a great source of income for the government, yet the risk of unintended consequences has taken place.

Companies that have earnings in other countries have decided to leave those earnings there in order to avoid the U.S. taxation, creating what is called untaxed foreign earnings. If the money is brought back to the United States, it becomes taxable at 35%. Over one third of the income is a pretty big chunk of money to be removed from the corporate coffers.

So what are the unintended consequences? Companies that are forced to leave their profits overseas due to the oppressive taxation, can’t use that money to hire more Americans, can’t use it to improve machinery and plants, and can’t use it to pay out higher dividends which could benefit income investors and pension plans. It also can’t be used to buy out smaller companies. Basically, it prevents money from flooding the US economy.

The current administration has proposed a 10% tax on repatriated funds, which would be a huge benefit to many corporations, primarily in the areas of technology and health care.

So there may be a play in some of the stocks that are holding huge amounts of money in other countries. For example, Apple (AAPL) holds more money outside the U.S. than any other publicly traded company, somewhere around $200 billion (give or take $25 billion; when you’re talking about that much money, who’s counting).

Other companies with a lot of funds held overseas include:

Alphabet [Google] (GOOG)

Cisco (CSCO)

General Electric (GE)

IBM (IBM)

Intel (INTC)

Microsoft (MSFT)

Oracle (ORCL)

Pfizer (PFE)

It may be a while before the untaxed foreign earnings tax break takes place, but when it does, the benefits to the companies should be swift.

Disclosure: Author owns AAPL and MSFT