Coping with the market during a rough week for stocks. As expected, a plunge. World stock markets swooned on August 8 in reaction to Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. long-term debt. On Wall Street, the DJIA fell 634.76, the S&P 500 79.92 and the NASDAQ 174.42. It was the toughest day on Wall Street [...]

Why these stocks are looking attractive again to high net worth investors. Large caps have kept up with small caps this year. 2010 was a great year for small stocks – the Russell 2000 advanced 25.31% while the S&P 500 returned 12.78% (15.06% including dividends). This year, the story may be different: when the market [...]

Stocks that tend to pay sizable dividends. Institutional and individual investors buy preferred stocks because they offer fixed dividends – in fact, dividend yields are typically greater than those of common shares.1 Preferred stocks are occasionally called hybrid securities, because they have characteristics of debt instruments as well as equities. Let’s review some of their [...]