It’s amazing how this week has turned out for me and for some investors that I talk to. I’m not talking about the traders who buy and sell everyday or even the day-traders. I’m referring about investors who have more of a buy and hold mentality. I’ve spoke before in another post about how in these trouble times that the buy-and-hold system isn’t really working. There’s too much volatility in the markets to do that type of trading, but with the moves (or lack of) of the markets this week…who knows.
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In this week the markets have held up quite well and I’ve made some good gains because of the strength and stability in the markets.
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News came out late last week about the Ponzi scheme that Bernard Madoff was running for some time. Taking over $50 billion dollars from many people. I would have figured that more people would have pulled out more money on that news.
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I guess that the Federal Reserve basically removing the lending rate this week help. That really got the markets fired up on Tuesday afternoon. It seem to continue throughout the week as well as news came out about the condition of the financial industry. The dollar has weakened in the last few trading days, which makes me a little confused to how the markets have been moving, but I’m not going to complain at this point.
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It seems that the stability is coming back to the markets as the VIX levels drop to more of a normal and acceptable area. Yes, the markets were flat, but with all the bad news that came out, we should be happy on the performance of the markets.
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Quite a few of the positions that I’ve taken in the last week were down from my core, so I did buy more of those stocks and from Monday to Friday, they’ve all made moves to the upside. With weeks like this when things could have gone worse than they did, It makes me wonder if we’re basically at the bottom already. I guess next week will give us a better clue on the answer of that.

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So far today in the morning trading hours, the markets are on a tear. The DOW has been up big since it opened and if things continue in this manner, we will have a great day and the DOW should close above 9000 today.
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Talks of the stimulus plan has caused some positive trading throughout this morning’s trading.
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With the moves that have happened this past week in the markets, many think about moving their capital out of the equities out of some of the less favorable sectors and look for the tried-and-true sectors during a recession period.
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We heard last week that we are officially in a recession, but the real question hasn’t been answered. That question is “how long have we been in a recession?”
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With that in mind, you have to take into consideration that the smart money have been positioning themselves in those sectors for sometime to protect their assets.
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An article that I found today talks about the fact that the time to get into some defensive plays, like consumer staples has past and you may want to do something else.

The article is from CNN Money.com, I hope you you find it interesting.

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What a difference a year makes. Last year at this time the stock market was on a tear, it just came off it all time high of 14,136 and looked like it was taking a healthy pull back, waiting to go up again. Then all of a sudden all the walls started to fall from the house of cards that had been built over the last few years. Signs of trouble from the sub-prime mortgage were starting to show.
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Fast-forward back to November 2008. The stock markets have lost nearly 50% from where they were last year and everyone is running for some sort of safe place to hide their money until the storm has passed. Jim Cramer from TheStreet.com
has been suggesting hiding out in strong companies that have some great dividends.
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What are dividends? Dividends are what some companies give to their shareholders. Basically dividends are cash that the company distributes from their cash reserves because they don’t have anything else to do with the profits that they make every year.
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Dividend payouts are figured on a percentage basis of what the share is worth at the time. When stocks drop in value, the yield on those dividends rises. Let’s say that a company’s stock is valued at $100 and they give a $5 dividend payout for the year (typically broken up in four payments), the yield of those dividends are 5%. Now if the company is now trading at $40 per share, the yield would be calculated at 12.5%. That would be some great returns on your investment. You can’t get that in any other type of investments.
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The problem comes in where the yield is too high for the company to keep paying out that dividend. So the company will cut the dividend to help the company keep some cash flow. So what is considered the “sweet-spot” yield for dividends? It’s hard to really pinpoint it. Typically look for those strong companies that give any where in the 3%-7% yield, but anything that is over 10% is considered too high to really expect it to stay there.
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Don’t get me wrong there are some that continue to give double digit yields, but they’re few and far between. The only one that I can say that kept their dividend payout the same this past month was Atlas Pipeline Partners (NYSE:APL). The stock was trading at $18 per share and their quarterly payout was $0.96 per share. That was a 5% yield just for the quarter, if you calculate it for the year it comes out to a 20% yield. I don’t expect it to be the same when they pay out their next dividend in February 2009. The company is in trouble now that oil has come down so much, so my advice is to stay away from Atlas.

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