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.
Use This Trick to Double Your Dividends
Fool contributor John Rosevear walks investors through how to use an options strategy called "writing covered calls" to increase the money their stocks earn for them.
Here's John with the gist: "We're making a little extra money every few months by selling someone the right to buy our stock at a price that it probably won't reach before the option expires. Over the course of a year, this can give our returns a big boost -- sometimes even doubling the stock's dividend yield -- without adding downside risk."
John also fills in the blanks on which companies are good candidates for this strategy, calling out stocks including those of recession-resistant consumer-staples companies Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG ) , H.J. Heinz (NYSE: HNZ ) , and Campbell Soup (NYSE: CPB ) .
Read the article for more on using options to boost your returns.
5 Things Amazon Needs to Do to Kill Netflix
On Tuesday, Fool analyst Seth Jayson engaged in some "self-indulgent armchair-CEO-ing" regarding the Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX ) situation. He came back the next day to expand on the challenges and opportunities Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN ) faces as it "squares off with Netflix and tries to send it to an early grave, or at least beat it until it's weak enough for Amazon itself to easily swallow."
One of the items on Seth's list is his belief that Amazon could top Netflix when it comes to knowing what its customers want to see. Read Seth's article to see all five things he thinks Amazon needs to do to crush Netflix. And don't be shy about using the comments section on that page to chime in with your own thoughts.
3 Picks to Beat the Stock-Market Beauty Contest
Are you trying to pick "pretty" stocks? Or stocks that you think other people think are pretty? Or have you branched out into looking for stocks that the aforementioned other people think even more other people think are pretty?
Well, don't, says Fool contributor Matt Koppenheffer, using a little wisdom from Robert Shiller, John Maynard Keynes, and Ben Graham to rescue investors from the morass.
"The bottom line is that this voting process is a short-term one that confounds even the shrewdest stock-market gunslingers," Matt wrote. "Unless you're some sort of weird savant or mindreader of the masses, trying to play this voting machine-cum-meta beauty contest is not a good idea. Your better bet is finding great companies … with solid fundamentals behind them that will tip the scales on the weighing machine over time."
The title says three picks, but Matt actually gives readers four stocks to beat the beauty trap. Their names are here: Procter & Gamble, Diageo, United Technologies (NYSE: UTX ) , and McDonald's (NYSE: MCD ) . The reasons to consider them are in Matt's article.
Fool online editor Kris Eddy owns no shares of any stocks mentioned in this article.
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