The Week’s Top Stories at VIN

Walgreen Co is the largest U.S. retail drug chain in terms of revenues. It sells prescription and non-prescription drugs, beauty care, personal care, household items, candy, photofinishing, greeting cards, seasonal items and convenience foods. Linked here is a detailed stock analysis and commentary.

The latest example of the power of dividends and dividend growth came on June 16 when U.S. Bank Wells Fargo (WFC) announced a 10% dividend increase. The stock market promptly celebrated big time. Normally dividend increases are hardly reported as news let alone get front page headlines.

In the quest to select solid dividend paying stocks that will appreciate over time and pay ever-increasing cash back to us in the form of dividends, success lies in the future, not the past. Sometimes the best dividend growing stocks for the future might be only in their infancy as far as dividend growth goes.

Sometimes being a dividend investor sucks. As part of my overall investing strategy, I state that ‘dividends are half the journey’. This essentially rules out any potential investments that pay a very small, and/or non-growing dividend. There are a few stocks, with stories that I believe in long term that were eliminated from my watchlist because of this fact.

In the quest to select solid dividend paying stocks that will appreciate over time and pay ever-increasing cash back to us in the form of dividends, success lies in the future, not the past. Sometimes the best dividend growing stocks for the future might be only in their infancy as far as dividend growth goes.

The general rule when buying and selling energy and commodity names is the reverse to other stocks; “buy when P/E ratios are high and sell when P/E ratios are low”. This strategy would work like a charm right now, if and only if, the energy and commodity bull market is coming to a close.

Earlier this week we looked at my top 5 high fliers for 2008. Unfortunately, for every up, there is a down and that is certainly true for my portfolio. As before, we will look at results through July 31, 2008. Here they are my cellar dwellers with comments:

Since 1984, Greenberg has outperformed the S&P 500 by almost 10% per year. One of the chief reasons he attributes to this is a strategy of anti-diversification!

A couple of months ago, Warren Buffett was kind enough to invite a group of us to Omaha to meet with him at Berkshire headquarters and subsequently dine at one of his favourite restaurants, Piccolo Pete’s.

Does MagicDiligence add value to the Magic Formula Investing strategy? A comparison against the raw screens.

Diageo is an international dividend achiever. It has been increasing its dividends for the past 10 consecutive years. From the end of 1997 up until August 2008 this dividend growth stock has delivered an annual average total return of 10.90 % to its shareholders. Diageo is the first international dividend company that I have analyzed in my pursuit of international exposure for my stock portfolio.

With profitability hitched to the notoriously cyclical moves of not one but two commodities, Terra Industries is one unpredictable stock. Can the current “perfect storm” for profitability last?

A detailed look at an odd-lot tender offer by someone other than Fat Pitch Financials! The United Rentals tender offer was a very standard tender offer, which was profitable for one financial blogger who shares his story.

Boring title isn’t it? I wanted to avoid the overused title “Size Matters” which for some reason is used as a headline for topics ranging anywhere from mp3 players to water-buffalo mating rituals. Nevertheless, the relevance of this assessment can’t be dismissed.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Warren Buffett said the U.S. economy is unlikely to improve before 2009, and there was a “reasonable chance” that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders would be wiped out though the companiesthemselves are too big to fail.