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Dividend Stocks Dividend Yield

April 23, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

If we are going to talk about dividend stocks we need a way to compare dividends. A dividend is an amount paid to shareholders of a company stock as a return of shareholder capital. Dividends are a sign of a healthy company since the only way for a company to pay out cash is to actually have cash. There is no way to hide a cash payment in a company’s account. This cash payment is part of an individual investor’s overall return. What Is Yield? The yield is simply the return provided by an investment. An investment of $1,000 that returns $100 to you provided a yield of $100. Simple right? But, there are some important variables that need to be understood in order to compare yields. Check out this Zelle review. For example, compare two $1,000 investments. One investment returns $100 in one month. The second investment returns $100 in ten years. Obviously, the first investment is far superior to the second investment. Over the same period of time, the first investment would return $12,000 versus just $100, assuming no reinvestment. Any real comparison of dividends requires that we take time into consideration. What Is Dividend Yield? The dividend …

IBM Stock Spinning Off Kyndryl

October 20, 2021April 14, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

I have had a love/hate relationship with IBM for a long time. On the one hand, it’s an American staple that successfully spun off its PC business back when it could get a good deal for it. On the other hand, it insists on wasting BILLIONS of dollars on share buybacks that do nothing more than help its executives meet their targets before they ship the stock back out the front door as executive stock options. But, and this is the kicker, IBM kicks out a very sweet dividend. Even when the stock trades sideways, earning 4% in a zero-interest environment with an almost zero chance of bankruptcy, it a great investment. Check out my Stash stock back review. Now, IBM is doing another thing that I don’t really like. IBM is listening to short-term investors who don’t like steady, but non-growth income. Instead, these shareholders want stock price appreciation, even at the cost of a long-term stable business. That means the board wants price appreciation. That means the CEO only earns those millions in bonuses if the stock price goes up, even if the company prints money during the day. As a result, IBM is spinning off its managed …

Stock Buying Opportunities – New on Finance Gourmet

March 12, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

I’m going to be changing my long-standing policy on Finance Gourmet on not recommending specific investments. Stock buying opportunities require more knowledge than most would-be investors are willing to acquire, but for those willing to learn, there is gold in them thar stock markets. Instead of babying my readers, I’m going to go all out. I think we both can handle it. Investing Recommendations from Finance Gourmet For years, I’ve kept my mouth shut when I see good opportunities for a few reasons. Most people don’t properly understand how and when to invest in individual stocks. — This is still true, but this is my job. I’ll be cranking out investment articles as fast as I can to educate readers how and when buying stocks and other investments is appropriate. (I have sort-of, partially, noted here where I need future investing strategy and knowledge articles to fill in a smart investing opportunity curriculum, but there are many, many more. – I need to get my email list up and running so I can keep you notified when I get them written up. For now, keep checking back.) Until recently the costs associated with buying and selling small amounts of stock …

Uber Buys Drizly, Proves It Has No Real Value

February 17, 2021February 2, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

Uber Buys Drizly for $1.1 Billion Once upon a time, people believed that Uber had some form of value. Its app was revolutionary. Its concept of using ordinary people using their own cars to provide rides was revolutionary. But, it turns out that it wasn’t so much revolutionary, as just the first in an easily replicable line of use-your-own-car apps. Drizly Is Just GrubHub for Alcohol, Which Is Just Uber for Food Uber is paying Drizly $1.1 billion in a desperate grab for any shot at profitability and sustainability. Uber’s acquisition of Drizly proves that there is nothing special about Uber. A handful of engineers, a couple of months, and a few million of funding and anyone can copy Uber well enough. After that, the “special” comes from good old fashioned sales. Building Drizly was a lot less about building an app, and a lot more about signing up liquor stores, and then convincing people that it was worth shelling out $5 to stay on their couch instead of heading down to their favorite liquor store. This was a tough sale pre-Covid. Why pay $5 plus tip for a liquor delivery when you could just swing by your favorite liquor …

Robinhood Becomes Nannyhood

January 29, 2021January 28, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

I’m not going to get into the Gamestop thing. There are plenty of other places you can read about it. Finance Gourmet isn’t really about day-trading or riding trends like this. What Finance Gourmet IS about is providing financial information and data to investors. I didn’t even get a chance to finish updating my Robinhood vs Stash vs Acorn post before Robinhood changed its reputation forever. (This is why I chose to just publish the mega post and keep editing it rather than waiting to fill in all the blanks) Robinhood Halts Trades to “Protect” Traders Robinhood today halted BUYS ONLY on several stocks that were being pushed higher by internet-based trading groups. In other words, you are welcome to sell and relieve the price pressure that is hurting hedge funds, but you can’t buy, because Robinhood is protecting you from yourself. Robinhood is the same platform that allowed a trader to rack up millions in debt over dubious trades until he killed himself. It claims to democratize trading by offering trading to the masses, so long as those masses don’t make a mess, apparently. But, this Gamestop thing is making its hedge fund masters uncomfortable, and well… now it …

Stash vs Acorns vs Robinhood vs Betterment vs Wealthfront

April 12, 2021January 25, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

acorns robinhood stash wealthfront betterment

It is time for a mega-review session where we review Stash versus Acorns versus Robinhood versus Betterment, and Wealthfront. Why these apps? These are current front runners in a crowded space that encourages small investments from regular people as a way to invest rather than the traditional broker models of investing. In a way, this Wealthfront review versus the other money investing apps begs for a new investing apps versus Fidelity, Schwab, ETrade, Ameritrade, ScottTrade review. That will have to wait for another day since I’ve already bitten off more than I can likely chew with an in-depth look at each of the Stash, Acorns, Robinhood, Betterment, Wealthfront apps and financial services. The Quick and Dirty Look (No Fine Print) Is Stash safe? What does Betterment do? Why is Wealthfront better or worse than Acorns? These questions demand an in-depth look at each one, and a thorough review of the fine print. Before that, we can take a look at what each money app and financial service say they do, and how that fits for regular investors. What Is Stash? Stash is why I’m writing this mega-review. People keep asking me about Stash. Then they ask me if Stash is …

Energy Stocks Up In 2021 Article

January 14, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

As a freelance finance writer, I get a steady feed of financial news stories and articles. I thought I would share this one from investors.com. Headlines Matter A lot of financial writers are under instructions to post something every day, or even several times a day. Under those circumstances, they can’t all be diamonds, but this one about 2021’s runaway sector, is cracking me up. For those of you not paying attention, today is January 14. That just the 9th trading day of the year (New Year’s Day is a holiday, plus weekends). So the sector that’s running away “so far” in 2021 is not exactly a meaningful time period. Why Are Energy Stocks Up? Saudi Arabia announced it would cut production. As the world’s largest oil producer, that is big news to the energy markets and resulted in oil prices rising, even though Russia says that it will increase production because it doesn’t want U.S. shale oil markets benefiting from the higher prices. Whatever higher oil prices happens to trickle through is good news for U.S. oil producers, hence the quick runup in the last few days to make it the “runaway” sector for 2021… so far. My favorite …

Wealthfront Review: Safe, Scam, or Legit?

February 9, 2021January 11, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

I keep getting questions about the pros and cons of Wealthfront, probably because they are advertising pretty heavily on Facebook and other platforms. So, it’s time for a Wealthfront review. The most important thing is to make sure Wealthfront is legit. It is SIPC insured (that’s like FDIC insurance for brokerages) so it at least has to be a real financial organization. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Wealthfront has good investment advice or good service advice, but it does mean that if they go under all of the sudden, then Wealthfront is safe insofar as your money is insured. Wealthfront reviews agree that Wealthfront is not a scam. Wealthfront Fees Wealthfront’s trademark is “Self-Driving Money.” It’s value proposition is that it will take care of your money, and manage it for you. Wealthfront is a robo-advisor, and one of the mini-investor platforms. Wealthfront fees are low. The main Wealthfront fee is the advisory fee of 0.25% on the amount deposited with Wealthfront. Of course, like any other wealth app, or brokerage, the investments Wealthfront uses have their own expenses. According to the company, the funds Wealthfront uses charge between 0.06% and 0.13%, which are very low fees for mutual …

5 Keys to 2021 Stock Market Predictions

January 7, 2021January 7, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

The 2021 stock market predictions will start flowing from the pens of the financial media as the end of 2020 fades into the background. There can be no question that stocks are pricing in a very happy new year. Does that make it a bubble? I think the better question is to understand what is holding up the market. The following tenants are why this market keeps going higher. If any one of them falls apart, then the market gets on shakier ground, and investors will start looking for an exit, whether in a nice, methodical path, or a bubble-bursting flee for the exits based upon how quickly the pillars crumble. What’s Holding Up The Stock Market? 5 Keys to Stock Market Predictions Low Interest Rates – The irony is that the economy is very shaky, and everyone including the Fed knows it, that’s why interest rates are at zero. These low rates are a key to propping up the market. Coronavirus Improvement – Look, the U.S. can’t do any worse with Covid than it did in 2020. Between the federal government just ignoring the whole thing, and the states opening and closing randomly, the U.S. Covid response was about …

Jeremy Grantham Calls “Epic Bubble”

January 6, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

One of my favorite themes here on Finance Gourmet is accountability. Accountability for your financial advisor, accountability for talking heads on money TV, accountability for analysts making “calls” about the market. Too often, all of these predictions and calls are simply forgotten until one of them is “right” and then, they won’t shut up about it. I try, in my huge amounts of spare time (Hah!) to bring a little bit of accountability to the big names and headlines that fly by. Today, it’s Jeremy Grantham. Epic Bubble Every article with the name Jeremy Grantham in it makes sure to “credit” him with predicting the housing bubble of 2007. Some also credit him with predicting the dot-com bubble of 2009. That’s pretty cool, but it is now 2021. Wondering about the TurboTax card? What has he predicted in the last 11 years? Have any of those predictions been good … or bad? Never mind that, the finance press says. He predicted those two things over a decade ago and now he says, “Epic bubble!” Print it! Jeremy Grantham Track Record First off, let’s give Mr. Grantham some credit. In January 2018, he predicted a “melt-up” in the stock market. He …