Balancing Stock Upside And Downside + MORE

A fellow blogger emailed me asking for more details about my “upside” and “downside” analysis. I often discuss those 2 factors when I make stock picks and they are a critical part of my stock analysis. It’s not as easy to explain how I use them compared to other factors such as a P/E ratio for example…

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is one of the largest retailers in the world.
-Seven Year Revenue Growth Rate: 5.8%
-Seven Year EPS Growth Rate: 9.4%
-Seven Year Dividend Growth Rate: 14.9%
-Current Dividend Yield: 2.43%
-Balance Sheet: Reasonable Leverage, Stable
Currently, Walmart’s $77 share price appears to be fairly valued for an expectation of 10% long-term returns…

Ellington Financial LLC (NYSE: EFC) has been named as a Top 10 dividend stock, according the most recent Dividend Channel ”DividendRank” report. The report noted that among the coverage universe, EFC shares displayed both attractive valuation metrics and strong profitability metrics. For example, the recent EFC share price of $25…

Visit StreetInsider.com at http://www.streetinsider.com/Dividends/Bank+of+Montreal+%28BMO%29+Declares+%240.74+Quarterly+Dividend%3B+4.8%25+Yield/8374387.html for the full story.

Most investors are familiar with Warren Buffet, who is the man in command at Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B). Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time, with a net worth placing him somewhere in the top three richest people in the world. His partner in crime was Charlie Munger, who has worked with him for the past 50 years…

The Dow Jones industrial average sits above 15,000, an all-time high.  But don’t be fooled, this doesn’t mean that stocks are expensive.  I understand that it seems logical to assume that if the Dow Jones industrial average, what many believe to be the bellwether index of the stock market, is at an all-time high, then it must simultaneously be overvalued…

I’m a huge fan of investing in stocks, as you can probably tell by my almost 100% allocation to the asset class in my Freedom Fund. More specifically, I’m very enthusiastic about investing in ownership stakes with high quality companies that have a history of rewarding shareholders by paying out a portion of profits via dividends…

After a complete company turnaround that will be discussed in future business classrooms across the U.S., Ford (NYSE: F ) reinstated its dividend, which had been absent for more than five years. At today’s level of $0.40 per share annually, that’s a yield of roughly 2.8%. That’s a favorable number when compared to competitors such as Toyota (NYSE: TM ) , at about 1%, or General Motors (NYSE: GM