The following Savings & Loan association(S&L) accept savings deposits and make home and other loans. S&Ls must have 65% of their lending in mortgage and consumer loans. Due to this, they are highly vulnerable to the housing market.
S&Ls with more than 4% dividend yields are shown below:
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Unlike many other countries, there are thousands of small community banks in the U.S. These banks have a smaller foot print when compared to the regional or national banks such as Bank of America(BAC), Fifth Third Bank(FITB), U.S. Bank(USB), etc. However they are usually know their customers better and maintain close relationships with the local small businesses and consumers.
Some community banks operate in just a few counties and have very few branches. For example, United Bancorp Inc Ohio (UBCP) is a state chartered bank and has branches in just a seven country area in Ohio. Accordingly these banks have very low market caps and liquidity can be issue since the total number of outstanding shares is low. UBCP has a market cap of about $45M with 5.2M shares outstanding.
The following table lists 33 small cap community banks with yields of over 5%:
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The S&P 500 Index is the barometer of the U.S. economy since it constitutes 500 leading companies from the leading industries. The top 10 components in the index based on market cap are Exxon Mobil Corp(XOM), Microsoft Corp(MSFT), Apple Inc.(APPL), Procter & Gamble(PG), Johnson & Johnson(JNJ),General Electric Co(GE), International Business Machines Corp(IBM), JP Morgan Chase & Co (JPM), Pfizer Inc (PFE) and AT&T Inc(T).
The table below lists 33 components of the S&P 500 that pay over 5% dividends:
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Utility stocks in the above list include Duke Energy(DUK), DTE Energy(DTE) and NiSource(NI). Altria(MO), Lorillard(LO) and Reynolds American (RAI) are in the tobacco sector.
The Russell 2000 Index measures the performance of about 2000 U.S. small cap stocks. The stocks are selected based on market cap and current index membership.
The index components are rebalanced annually so that larger stocks do not distort the performance of this pure small cap index. As of December, 2009 the average weighted market cap is $1.0 B and the largest company by market cap is about $5.6B. Financial services, technology, consumer discretionary, health care and producer durables form the top5 sectors in this index.
Some of the ETFs that track the Russell 2000 Index include iShares Russell 2000 Index Fund(IWM), ProShares Ultra Russell2000(UWM) and ETFS Russell 2000 Fund(RTWO).
The table below 30 components of this index that have dividend yields greater than 10%:
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Germany tops the list of countries that were ranked based on the Logistics Performance Indicators (LPI) in a recent study titled “Connecting to Compete 2010: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy” by The World Bank. With Europe’s largest economy and centrally located Germany offers a sophisticated logistics network for companies to reach EU’s 500 million customers. Singapore is ranked number two on the list.
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The U.S. is ranked at number 15. “In terms of how developing countries are doing per region, South Africa (28) is the top performer from Africa; China (27) from East Asia; Poland (30) from Central and Eastern Europe; Brazil (41) from Latin America; Lebanon (33) from the Middle East; and India (47) from South Asia.”Somalia, Eritrea and Sierra Leone are three of the worst countries in terms of logistics infrastructure.