Kimberly-Clark (KMB) and Colgate-Palmolive (CL) have a lot in common. They are both giants in the consumer staples sector, and both have raised their dividends for several decades. Both stocks are Dividend Aristocrats. The Dividend Aristocrats Excel spreadsheet has 51 stocks with 25+ consecutive years of dividend increases. Kimberly-Clark has paid dividends for more than 80 years, while Colgate-Palmolive has paid uninterrupted dividends since 1895. Kimberly-Clark has increased its dividend for 45 years in a row. Colgate-Palmolive has an even more impressive dividend growth history. It has increased its dividend for 55 years, which also make...
It’s easy to find gloomy predictions for continued slow growth of the US economy. Thus, Lee Branstetter and Daniel Sichel caught my eye with their essay, “The Lee Branstetter and Daniel Sichel caught my eye with their essay, “The written as a “Policy Brief” for the Peterson Institute of International Economics (June 2017, PB17-26). Here how they start: Labor productivity performance in the United States has been dismal for more than a decade. But productivity slowdowns—even lengthy ones—are nothing new in US economic history. This Policy Brief makes the case that the current slowdown will come to an en...
South Korean Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Yello Mobile had been planning to go public this year. But recent financial results suggest that those plans may have been delayed by a year. Yello Mobile’s Offerings Sanghyuk Lee, a former executive at South Korean Internet company Daum Communications Corp founded Yello Mobile in 2013 to set up a company that could integrate several small local mobile commerce companies under one umbrella. Since the company’s first service was that of providing hotel and restaurant recommendations, it took on the name Yello Mobile – a take on “yellow pages”. Since then, Yello Mobile has grown into...
Ticker Last High Low Daily Change (pip) Daily Range (pip) NZD/USD 0.7319 0.7369 0.7247 55 122 NZD/USD breaks the monthly opening range following the semi-annual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony, but the near-term outlook remains riddled with mixed signs as the pair fails to test the 2017-high (0.7376). The price action from February may serve as a blueprint as the rebound from the May-low (0.6818) appears to be exhausted, and the resilience in the kiwi-dollar exchange rate may largely unravel over the coming days as New Zealand’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) is expected to slow to an annualized 1.9% from 2.2% in the first-quarter of 2017. Signs of...
At first glance you might very well think Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is having a hugely successful rebirth. Here is two-year chart of the semiconductor company’s stock price: After so many fits and starts and promises over the last few decades, with little to show for it in the way of sustainable profitability, I had not really looked closely at the shares, even during this huge run recently. Then I read an article in the July issue of Fortune that spotlighted AMD’s bet on new chips that apparently has gotten investors’ attention. For a company whose annual revenue in 2015 and 2016 ($3.99 billion and $4.27 billion, respectively...
Investors may find non-U.S. mutual funds more attractive than those with significant domestic exposure. Moreover, non-U.S. mutual funds are excellent choices for those looking to diversify their investments across a wide range of foreign countries including both emerging and developed nations. Thus, investing in non-U.S. mutual funds may prove profitable. Below we share with you three top-ranked non-U.S. mutual funds. Each has earned a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and is expected to outperform its peers in the future. To view the Zacks Rank and past performance of all non-U.S. mutual funds, investors can click here to see the com...
Note: We’ve updated our periodic look at the Philly Fed ADS Index today’s release, which includes jobless claims through July 8. The Philly Fed’s Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti Business Conditions Index (hereafter the ADS index) is a fascinating but relatively little known real-time indicator of business conditions for the U.S. economy, not just the Third Federal Reserve District, which covers eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware. Thus it is comparable to the better-known Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index (more about the comparison below). Named for the three economists who devised it, the index, as descr...
Drug stocks have bounced back this year with the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index and the NYSE ARCA Pharmaceutical Index gaining 18.6% and 10.8%, respectively, year-to-date (YTD). There are several reasons for this improved performance. Investors are now more comfortable with the drug pricing scenario and are willing to look at the fundamentals of the sector. Although the drug pricing issue will remain a headwind, expectations are that steps taken by the Trump administration to drive down drug prices will not be as draconian as previously expected. Deregulation and increased competition seem to be some of the ways that will be used to control...
I’m sure you’ve heard that malls are getting killed. Pretty soon there will be no malls. Except for those with a Planet Fitness! Source: WZZM There has been lots of ink (and electrons) spilled over the death of retail. Everyone knows it is only a matter of time before Amazon puts every department store, every mall, every brick-and-mortar retailer out of business. Amazon gets an infinity market cap and everyone else gets zero. Sound familiar? That’s the accepted wisdom. Is Amazon a great business? Yes. Is a department store a bad business? Probably. Does Amazon get 100% market share, with department stores getting zero? Probably not. Am...
The Dow hits new highs, S&P 500 & Nasdaq not far behind. The S&P has rallied 31 points off of the Tuesday’s lows when Don Jr.’s emails hit the wire. Yeah, it actually sparked a sell-off, but like all sell-offs, it was short lived. Instead, stocks are staring down the barrel of all-time highs, and the Dow has already attained that feat. Ideally, I’d like to see it break us out of the box pattern that we have been stuck in for almost 2 months now. If that happens today, then Friday becomes ultra important for the sake of follow through. At that point, we may actually have, in fact, a new leg up in the market a...