Fools were out and about this week in an investing world jampacked with actions and ideas. Here are three articles you might find useful as you decide how to invest your money.
Bank Dividends Are Coming: Here's What You Need to Know
Big banks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC ) , Citigroup (NYSE: C ) , and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC ) have all said they plan to start paying dividends to shareholders. Is it time to buy shares and rejoice?
Fool contributor Morgan Housel took the 30% payout ratio the banks are bandying about, mixed in estimated earnings per share, and came out with yields for the four banks ranging from 2.68% to 3.14%. "Not as much as banks typically yielded before the financial crisis, but still above the average S&P 500 company's yield," Morgan wrote.
Even though the banks appear financially strong enough to handle this shareholder payment, Morgan remains leery about owning their common stock. "There's still just too much insanity and funny business left over from the bubble years," he wrote.
If you'd like to keep track of all the Foolish news and numbers on these bank stocks, simply click the following links to add them to your free, personalized watchlist: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo.
Prepare Your Brackets for March Badness
"Rotten corporate behavior often proves profitable in the short run, but in the long term, consumer payback can wreak havoc on misbehaving companies -- and their competitors will stand poised to pounce at the first sign of weakness," wrote Fool columnist Alyce Lomax after considering The Consumerist's 2011 lineup of choices for the "worst company in America."
Check out the article to see what companies, including Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ ) , Apple, eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY ) , Verizon (NYSE: VZ ) , AT&T, and Comcast, have to do with this contest. Then scroll down to the comments section on that page to sound off about your choices for worst company.
4 ETF Trends You Must Know About
Many investors use exchange-traded funds to easily bring a wide range of stocks into their portfolios. A recent report from Schwab outlined four trends in ETFs that Fool editor and writer Dan Caplinger thought Fools needed to know about.
In brief, ETF investors preferred funds with low expense ratios and remained partial to ETFs investing in commodities and emerging-market economies. They had an on-again/off-again relationship with bond ETFs and had a focus on dividend income.
Here's something else interesting about how ETF investors think: "[S]pecialty ETFs including SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD ) and Vanguard MSCI Emerging Markets, which offer targeted exposure to narrower segments of the market, bring investors in the door -- and then they diversify beyond those niche offerings after they get comfortable with the ETF concept," Dan wrote.
Read the article to get Dan's thoughts on what this information means for investors of all stripes.
See a stock in this story you'd like to follow? Add it to your free, personalized My Watchlist, which will find all of our Foolish news and numbers on the stock.
RSS Headlines
Fool UK