Consumer goods stocks are attractive from a long-term investment perspective because they are generally less volatile and tend to have slow but steady growth over many years.While they may not offer the thrill of holding hot technology stocks like Facebook(FB) or Apple (APPL) they offer diversification benefits to a portfolio and most importantly they provide downward …

Continue reading ‘The Top 16 Global Consumer Goods Companies by Market Capitalization’ »

The current dividend yield of the S&P 500 is 1.91%. It has stayed around the 2% mark for many years. Despite corporate profits soaring and reaching record-high levels most U.S. companies have not shared the higher earnings with their shareholders in  the form of higher dividend payouts. The chart below shows the long-term declining trend of dividend …

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The S&P 500 has more than doubled from the low reached during the global financial crisis. However some investors’ portfolios may still not have recovered fully because some individual stocks they own may still be down from the highs reached before the crisis. Hence cutting down losses on an investment is important. Waiting for a stock that has fallen …

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Investing in foreign stocks involves many risks one of which is currency risk. While most currencies of developed countries remain stable  in relation to the US dollar there is still the risk that currency exchange movements can reduce returns earned from equities. Unlike emerging or frontier markets investors in developed countries need not worry about dramatic …

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The iShares MSCI Germany Index Fund(EWG) is down over 8% year-to-date while iShares MSCI France Index Fund (EWQ) is down just over 3%. The German ETF is down since German stocks has been more negatively impacted due to the Ukraine crisis. Germany has more exposure to Russia than France. Here is a quick comparsion of the two ETFs: a) …

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