Investing

Is Verizon Stock a Buy Right Now?

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Is Verizon Stock a Buy Right Now? 1

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 …

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Upcoming Correction or Stock Market Crash

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finance investing news

Here it comes. No, not the stock market crash. No, not a stock market correction, either. OK. Well, maybe those things are coming. But, what most definitely IS coming are the analysts’ notes, financial stories, and money website articles about a possible 10% correction, or even 20% crash. How To Get Credit For Predicting The Crash You’ve seen the ads a hundred times on the internet. “He predicted the real estate crash, now he recommends this one company!” So, how do you get credit for calling a stock market correction or stock market crash, anyway? The sad reality is that it doesn’t take much. As long as you have some sort of statement, article, analysis, or investor note floating around out there mentioning a crash or correction when one actually happens, you (and your PR department) simply rush out to take credit. Whether the financial media decides to buy it depends a bit on how long ago your “prediction” happened, and how accurate it was. But, as I’ve tried to point out time and again here on Finance Gourmet and other places I do financial writing for, these predictions aren’t always what they are cracked up to be. Often, the …

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Kroger Stock Dividend Value and Analysis

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kroger stock investment

Kroger stock reported strong earnings and raised its guidance for the coming year earlier today. At least some of this increase can be attributed to the fact that when people eat out less because of the pandemic, they have to buy more groceries to make up for that meals being made at home. Is Kroger a Buy Now? As always, the best way to invest for long-term goals is to create a diversified portfolio tailored to your risk tolerance and goals. Once you’ve gotten those set up and properly funded, you can look at other investment opportunities. Kroger is a nationwide grocery chain that includes many different brands including King Soopers here in Colorado. As a result, Kroger is not a growth stock, but it also has a large position in an industry that cannot be eliminated. People need food and they have to buy it somewhere. The stock’s price ranged from the low 20s to the mid-40s over the entire previous five year range. That said, the stock trades at a 22 PE ratio, which is high for this kind of company. As always, I believe in my stocks paying me money why I wait for them to appreciate …

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Morningstar Reports Free!

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free morningstar access

Morningstar Premium reports costs $29.95 per month for subscribers, but there is a way to get much of Morningstar Premium free! How To Get Free Morningstar Reports Stock research and mutual fund research are important ingredients of a successful investing portfolio. However, for investors who are not continuously adding new investments to their stock portfolio or mutual funds portfolio, the ongoing cost of Morningstar may not be worth it. Fortunately, there is a legal way to get free Morningstar access so you can see if that Coca Cola dividend stock is the way to go or if you should look for other dividend stock investing opportunities. Free Morningstar Access From Libraries It turns out that some public library systems offer Morningstar for free among their online database offerings. Here in Colorado, I know that both the Douglas County Library system and the Denver Public Library system offer free Morningstar reports for their library card holders as well as other free library perks. The Morningstar access is not easy to find on either library’s website, but it is there under Research or Databases. The free Morningstar access includes not just the usual online stuff, but the commonly used one-page report as …

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Do I Need a Financial Advisor?

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which 529 plan is right

To read financial advice magazines and websites, you might think that anyone who uses a financial advisor is either dumb, or very rich. These money publications all say that with a little research and education, everyone should be able to do all financial planning and investing themselves to achieve financial independence. In the real world, however, real finance doesn’t always work that way. Getting Stuck Doing Finance Theoretically, getting your finances in order and investing can be a fairly simple process. However, it turns out that in reality, there are all of these places to get stuck. Once you get stuck, you lose all of your forward progress. Eventually, enough time passes and you have to start all over. As a financial advisor, I met with dozens of potential clients who walked out of my office without signing up to work with me. The vast majority never went forward with doing anything. Chances are, they met with a different advisor years later having done nothing in between. This all occurred to me while trying to work with fellow writers to set up their own online writing businesses. No matter how straightforward the instructions seemed, folks kept getting stuck. What struck …

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Why Invest In Dividend Stocks

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best dividend stocks apple

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 …

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Dividend Stocks Coca Cola

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coca-cola dividend

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 …

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Federal Reserve Meeting Notes Meaning

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fed reserve meeting notes

The Federal Reserve meets once a quarter. After that meeting, they announce what, if any changes, they have made to the Fed’s interest rate policy. At the last meeting, there were no changes to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate targets. The Federal Reserve meeting notes refine the details of the main Fed announcement. Fed’s Meeting Notes Later, after they have been reviewed and made viewable for the public, the Fed releases the notes from it’s meeting. Financial analysts and market pundits then parse these notes for clues to the Fed’s thinking. This time, everyone is looking toward how the notes take about bond-buying tapering. What does this mean? The short version is that when the economy went so bad back during the Great Recession following the real estate market crash, the Fed had to do more than just cut interest rates to stabilize the economy. In my opinion, the Fed Chairman Ben Bernake saved the US economy from a hard recession by flooding the market with liquidity and saying that he would keep doing it for as long as it takes. Check out my Acorns review is Acorns Legit? Basically, as long as it takes, has never really come. One …

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Procter & Gamble Stock Investment

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pg stock investing

Procter & Gamble, known mostly as PG, announced their new CEO and predicted solid earnings ahead even though most of the commodities used to make its wide variety of products are increasing in price. PG currently trades around $140 per share, which is the top of its V-shaped chart from the last 12 months. At this price PG offers a 2.46% annual dividend. This is way more than any of your bank accounts, and comes from a stock that really isn’t going anywhere, up or down, fast. Here is the best part. “Activist shareholder” Nelson Peltz is stepping down from the PG board after the company was able to refuse his proposals to break up the company and move its headquarters in a bid to make more money for himself and other short-term shareholders, without regard to the company’s future, or long-term shareholders. Although Peltz never prevailed on any of his major proposals, the fact that he is stepping down indicates that he is done trying to leverage his “large” position of stock into moves that might not be in the best long-term interests of the company. In all of this commotion, the company also named a new CEO. Jon …

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Baker Hughes Stock Buyback from GE

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opec deal stocks

So, weird little bit of financial news today. There are a couple of moving parts, so let’s get those out of the way first. Last summer in July 2020, GE announced that intended to “fully monetized” its stake in Baker Hughes over the next three years. Fully monetize is lingo for sell. Earlier this year, GE said it sold $1 billion worth of Baker Hughes during the second quarter. GE also announced that it planned to sell another $1.3 billion worth of BKR during the third quarter. That brings us up to date. Baker Hughes announces a $2 billion stock repurchase program In part, the idea behind the share buyback is that Baker Hughes is using some of the profits it has reaped recently thanks to a recovering economy and a carefully controlled quota by OPEC. Buying $2 billion worth of stock would essentially soak up the $2 billion that GE is selling right now. In a world where supply and demand are the only factors that impact a stock’s price, GE’s selling would be pushing the price of BKR down. You can kind of see that in the April to May dip in BKR. Assuming that BKR sold its …

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