- The Finance Gourmet

Good Dividend Investment in Johnson & Johnson

June 5, 2023 by Finance Gourmet

It’s no secret I am a big fan of dividend investing. What better way to invest than to let the company you are investing in pay you to hold onto their stock until it makes a sweet, profitable trade. What is a good dividend stock to invest in is a multilayered question, but you can’t go wrong starting with a look at the Dividend Kings. Johnson & Johnson Good Time to Invest? Chances are pretty good that you have heard of Johnson & Johnson. In addition to being a household name for all of the reasons you know, it is also a household name for dozens of products you use every day that just don’t have the J&J name on them. Johnson & Johnson stock trades under the JNJ ticker symbol. It is part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the S&P 500 index. As a dividend king, J&J has raised its dividend every year for 50 consecutive years. When a company can do that, it means that they are busy running a profitable company and not chasing executive bonus tiers. As you can imagine, J&J is not a growth stock, but that is okay. Johnson and Johnson will …

Are Bank Stocks a Good Investment: Assessing Their Potential in Your Portfolio

May 28, 2023May 28, 2023 by Finance Gourmet

are bank stocks a good investment now graphic

Deciding to invest in bank stocks is one way to add both dividends and financial growth to your portfolio. While finance stocks offer several advantages, they also come with unique challenges that warrant full consideration. Investing in bank stocks can provide long-term growth through consistent dividend payments, potential for significant capital appreciation, and they serve as a crucial component in diversified investment portfolios. Bank Stocks and Finance Stocks The financial services sector, which includes banks and other finance-related entities, plays a vital role in the overall economy, making it an essential segment to understand before diving into bank stocks. While investing in banks can provide a solid return on your investment, it’s important to keep in mind the risks associated with this type of investment. Banks can be sensitive to changes in interest rates, economic cycles, and regulatory changes, which can all play a part in determining their profitability. Assessing the Potential of Bank Stocks Determining the potential of bank stocks is a crucial step for those investing in the finance sector. Bank stocks, as key components of the financial industry, often display stability and growth that most investors seek for their portfolios. Assessments typically depend on various factors such …

Dividend Kings 2023

January 12, 2023 by Finance Gourmet

A somewhat overused concept, in my humble opinion, albeit a strong investing strategy is the Dividend Kings as derived from Dividend Aristocrats. The list of Dividend Aristocrats is made of S&P 500 companies that have increased their dividends for 25 consecutive years. The list of Dividend Kings is composed of stocks that have increased their dividends for 50 consecutive years. Whether or not Dividend Kings must be part of the S&P500 is up for debate. What is the point of Dividend Kings? Well, you see sonny, back in my day… No seriously, I just celebrated my 50th birthday. I was making investments when discount brokers were a new thing. Imagine the concept of not charging a huge commission on each trade. The horror! When I first started investing, there was no such thing as investing online, there was no such thing as the internet bubble, and there was certainly no such thing as buying fractional shares. What is my point? Well, back when those first three things were ramping up, there were people all over the internet telling you that you were a fool to listen to experts and that you should listen to them. As proof, they had portfolios …

AT&T Slashes Dividend

February 4, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

AT&T is making big moves, are they good for AT&T, or bad for AT&T. As everyone knows, I’m a dividend guy. I believe in buying the stocks of good companies and then treating them like bonds, collecting interest payments while ignoring price movements. Usually, when you buy a solid, US company stock with a dividend, that dividend is yours more or less forever. If you buy Apple today (2/4/22) you’ll get about a 0.50% dividend yield. If you like, you can choose to think of it as buying an Apple CD that pays 0.50% with a five-year (or 10, or 3, or whatever) maturity date. When you do that, the daily price movements of Apple stock are irrelevant to your financial plans which count on nothing more than receiving 0.50% interest, and some day getting your principal back (with some risk). AT&T Dividend Cut But, sometimes, a company can cut its dividend. Usually that isn’t a huge surprise. In the case of AT&T, there has been talk of changing (cutting) the dividend for some time now. That being said, a 50% cut is a big deal. As of yesterday, the annual dividend yield for AT&T stock was over 8%. As …

Market Monday 1-24-2022

January 24, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

Hey, Boys and Girls, here comes an interesting week for investors. The following article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell securities. As always, the best investment strategy for long-term investing is building a well-diversified portfolio based upon your time frame and risk tolerance and then leaving it alone except for annual or semi-annual rebalancing. But… Short-Term Investing January 2022 The week of January 24, 2022 looks fun. And by fun, I mean interesting. The Fed meets on Wednesday. Everyone expects it to raise interest rates to help tame inflation, while also reducing its bond buying to do the same thing. If that weren’t enough, a bunch of big companies are set to report their earnings this week including Apple, Microsoft, and McDonalds. At least we don’t have to worry about options expiring, that was last week. As I write this, the S&P 500 hit the 10% down mark necessary to call the move from January 3 to now a correction. Remember a correction is a 10% reduction, although most people will require the market to close beneath that level to call it a recession. A 20% reduction …

Advanced Mortgage Tricks

December 28, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

Advanced Refinance Tricks For the Financially Well Off Got plenty of money socked away for the kids’ college? Already have a retirement plan and funding it well? When someone asks about an emergency fund do you think, sure, which account would I use? Then, here is a trick for you. Mortgage interest rates are at historic lows. As I write this, it wouldn’t be hard at all to get a 3% mortgage if you have good credit and put 20%+ down. What if, you took $100,000 out of your mortgage with a refinance that lowered your interest rate enough to cover all closing costs, and then, put that $100,000 into a solid dividend paying stock? Just for example, right now, Verizon pays something like 4.85% per year at its current $52.50 stock price. If you took the $100,000 you got from your cash out refi, and invested in in Verizon stock as a long-term investment, Verzion would spend the next 10 or 20 years paying you the equivalent of 4.85% on your $100,000 stock investment. Which means you are earning more on your investment than you are paying on the extra mortgage principal. Now, you do have to pay 15% …

Is Best Buy Stock a Buy?

November 16, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya? Punk. Best Buy reports earnings next week on Tuesday 11/23/21. Is Best Buy stock a buy before earnings? As you can tell from the subheading, there is a lot of uncertainty around buying Best Buy stock here. Don’t get me wrong. Best Buy is doing really well. Sales are up. Some of that is from the pandemic. If you’re going to be stuck in your house you want a bigger TV, better speakers, a new Nintendo Switch, an Oculus VR headset. You get the idea. But, Wall Street is not stupid. They know that about Best Buy’s sales and it is all baked into expectations for the retailer. However, here is where it gets interesting. According to the Best Buy stock quote page on Yahoo Finance, the consensus projected earnings for Best Buy to report in Q4 is the same as it was for last quarter at 1.85 per share. Last quarter, Best Buy shattered that expectation by reporting 2.98 per share. So, where does that put us? There is the possibility that Best Buy and its upper management are strict, straight-arrow, by the books executives. On the other hand, there is the …

Is Verizon Stock a Buy Right Now?

October 20, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

Verizon just reported its third-quarter results. As always, the finance news is reporting whether or not Verizon stock beat estimates. If that’s the kind of quick news you need to see, then yes, Verizon stock beat estimates for earnings, but revenue was slightly under estimates. Now that we’ve gotten the skin deep financial analysis out of the way, let’s dig in and see if Verizon stock will help us achieve financial independence. Verizon Stock Analysis I’ve owned Verizon stock forever. It pays a solid dividend and as an enormous telecommunications it isn’t going away without a big warning, so it fits perfectly in my non-retirement stock portfolio as a bond-stock, or value stock, if you prefer. Thanks to those decent earnings, Verizon stock is rising today, but it’s still down for the year, and year-to-date. As of yesterday’s close, the 12-month dividend yield stood at almost 5%, at 4.89%. You can’t get an interest rate like that anywhere today. So, if you’re willing to hold Verizon stock as a dividend paying bond-like investment for a few years, chances are good that you can at least get your principal (cost basis) back. And, if Verizon happens to have a good few …

Why Invest In Dividend Stocks

August 23, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

Why should I invest in dividend stocks? What Are Dividend Stocks? At the most basic level, dividend stocks are stocks that pay dividends. A dividend is a cash payment made by a company to shareholders. Dividends are set by the corporation’s board of directors. Why Invest In Dividend Stocks for Portfolios There are a lot of different reasons to invest in stocks. For many people, the purpose of investing in stocks is the capital appreciation that occurs over time. This is especially true for long-term investors constructing well diversified portfolios. Other investors invest in stocks in order to generate income. Dividend stocks pay a regular cash dividend to investors who own shares of the company’s stock. Putting together a portfolio of companies that pay dividends can generate income that investors can use for any purpose. Check out my Credit Karma review Get Paid To Invest For me, the best reason to invest in dividend stocks is to get paid while investing. Remember, for long-term goals like retirement, or college planning, a well diversified portfolio tailored to your risk tolerance is the best investing strategy. For investing beyond long-term goals, or for additional investing, dividend investing is a clever way to …

Dividend Stocks Coca Cola

August 31, 2021August 18, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

Dividend stocks are often an overlooked investment by many Main Street Americans. It isn’t hard to see why. A 3 percent yield on a $5,000 investment isn’t all that impressive, a mere $150 per year, or so. When you are thinking about turning a lifetime of 401k contributions into a retirement plan, that isn’t really the kind of number that gets your mind racing about possibilities. However, the more investable assets you actually have, the more dividend stocks start to look interesting. Consider that many dividend stocks are fairly safe from anything but the most catastrophic downturns. Stocks like McDonalds, and Coca Cola, for example. Those stocks can, and will, trade up and down, but if you don’t really plan on selling them anytime soon, they are sort of like corporate bonds where if you hold them until retirement (or just several years) chances are you will at least get all of your original investment back. What makes dividend stocks like Coca Cola so interesting in a growing portfolio is that they offer potential growth, plus the ability to outpace inflation, all while kicking off real income. Asset Allocation and Dividend Stocks As always, you shouldn’t be thinking about investing …