NEW YORK----BlackRock, Inc. today announced that quarter-end portfolio data for its closed-end funds, as of December 31, 2009, is now available. The information is available on BlackRock?s website at www.blackrock.com.
NEW YORK----BlackRock Advisors, LLC announced today the Boards of Trustees of BlackRock Dividend AchieversTM Trust , BlackRock Strategic Dividend AchieversTM Trust , BlackRock Enhanced Dividend AchieversTM Trust and BlackRock S&P Quality Rankings Global Equity Managed Trust approved a change to the investment strategy employed by each Fund.
NEW YORK----BlackRock Real Asset Equity Trust , BlackRock Enhanced Dividend AchieversTM Trust , BlackRock Strategic Dividend AchieversTM Trust , BlackRock Dividend AchieversTM Trust , BlackRock Energy and Resources Trust , BlackRock International Growth and Income Trust , BlackRock Health Sciences Trust , BlackRock EcoSolutions Investment Trust and BlackRock Enhanced Capital and Income Fund, Inc. today paid the following dividends per share: Fund Pay Date Per Share BCF December 31, 2009 $ 0.271800 BDJ December 31, 2009 $ 0.245000 BDT December 31, 2009 $ 0.162500 BDV December 31, 2009 $ 0.162500 BGR December 31, 2009 $ 0.405000 BGY December 31, 2009...
Standard & Poor's Dividend Aristocrats are underperforming the broader U.S. domestic indexes. on a year to date basis. Through April 4th, the Aristocrats have generated a return of -7.20% compared to the S&P 500 Index return of-6.70% and the Nasdaq Index return of +2.80%. The Aristocrats have managed to outperform the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index that has returned -8.60% so far this year. Although financials are the worst performing sector in the S&P 500 Index year-to-date, only four of the bottom ten performers are financial stocks.
Excerpt from Raymond James strategist Jeffrey Saut's latest essay, published Monday (October 6th):
The call for this week: Well, we arrived at the office at 5:30 a.m. [on Monday] only to see the S&P 500 preopening futures down 33 points amid news out of Europe of an expanding banking/credit crisis. Monday morning’s swoon comes on the back of Friday’s Flop, which turned out to be yet another Dow Theory “sell signal” like the one we wrote about last November.
Six months ago, I wrote about a way of screening closed-end funds (CEFs), and my testing of the system at marketocracy.com.
That article, A System for Trading Closed-End Funds, rates CEFs by dividing the discount by the expense ratio. So, higher is better (high discount divided low fees). The system also requires insider buying, to get a qualitative valuation of the fund. The test-fund continues to outperform the S&P 500, beating the index by 4% in the last 6 months.
George Spritzer submits: Recently a number of new ETFs have been issued that are related to Mergent?s ?Dividend Achiever? indexes. A dividend achiever is a company that has increased its regular annual dividend for ten or more consecutive years.
Note that keeping the dividend unchanged one year out of ten is not acceptable and would cause the company to drop off of the ?dividend achiever? list. Such a company would need to re-start the 10-year cycle all over again to get back onto the list. There is also a liquidity requirement- the two month average daily trading (price*volume) must...
Bird Construction Income Fund is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Tim Talbott, P.Eng. to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer of Bird Construction Company Limited ...
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