Christmas wish list, part one

At this time of year our thoughts usually turn to the holiday festivities, family gatherings and such. While no different for me, I usually have one more activity at this time of year that puts me in the Christmas spirit, the creation of an investing wish list. Making an investment Read more…

Option selling as an income strategy

I’ve covered one of my alternative investment strategies for retirement portfolios already, in my post on structured products. Today, I’ll introduce the primary strategy I use to generate income from my cash balance – option selling. Cash is an important part of any asset allocation. It allows an investor to Read more…

EPD: Let this winner ride

In an earlier post I discussed the big boy of the MLP space, Kinder Morgan. Today, I’ll talk about the new big boy in the MLP space, Enterprise Products Partners (EPD). EPD is now the largest MLP by market cap. Like KMP, EPD’s historical performance as an investment is downright Read more…

Is it time to sell KMP?

Total returns of 27% per year since 1996. 15% annual growth for dividends in the same time. A $100 investment in ’96 would have turned into $2,518 as of 9/3/2010 compared to $185 for the S&P500. It’s no doubt that Kinder Morgan (KMP) has been a stellar investment over the Read more…

Heads up: tech stock dividends!

Short post for this Saturday evening. Florida Gators are playing Kentucky as I type! Gotta get back to the game. I love dividends. I worked in the technology industry for 20+ years. But that’s about where the relationship normally ends between dividends and technology stocks. Tech stocks are growth stocks Read more…

Beware MLP ETFs

I haven’t gotten around to discussing owning individual stocks vs mutual funds vs ETFs but I saw an article today that I wanted to discuss briefly with regard to MLPs. There have been several ETFs launched recently to track the performance of the MLP sector or the Alerian MLP Index Read more…