Great - thanks nitro. Seemingly the names of those companies are not being disclosed. I dropped a line to CNBC.
This man take the sample of 139 dividend champions to see what happens to the dividend before/during/after USA recession. Very interesting!!! http://seekingalpha.com/article/294...end-champions-fared-during-the-last-recession Then from this link above I find "dividend champions" Go scroll down to the almost last sentence; "You could find the complete list here" Click the word (here) then you can see the dividend champions in the spreadsheet of microsoft excel. http://www.dividendgrowthinvestor.com/2008/05/dividend-conspiracies.html
HI Trendlover - simply the best I have read for years. Thanks a lot. Next item I'm keen on are first class options pages for underlyings like FXE - GLD - SLV - QQQ. But this might be the wrong thread for it so I apalogize if it's too much off topic.
"The latest surge in Apple shares [AAPL 500.95 7.53 (+1.53%) ] thatâs pushed them above $500 is not because of speculation about its next revolutionary product, but rather the possibility that the preeminent technology growth stock will declare a dividend, or even split its shares, analysts and traders said." http://www.cnbc.com/id/46368505
You always look for complicated answers to simple situations. AAPL made tons of money, because they have no real debt and don't really need to pay an enormous r&d budget right now, most of the money simply increases the value of the company. So the shares must go up, because they are worth more. Do you understand yet that equity represents real ownership in the company ? And that every shareholder owns their share of that profit stream ?
But dividends are not guaranteed. Also, when a dividend is paid out, the stock will fall on the same day by approximately the amount of the dividend. This alone should make it clear that dividends make little difference to the economic value of a company. In fact, if the company can reinvest capital at a superior rate to the investor, then dividend payments destroy value. That is why many companies pay low or zero dividends - they can use the cash to create superior value rather than simply distribute it back to the investor.
There have been many studies that have shown dividend paying stocks outperform non-dividend paying stocks over the long run. You are right that on the ex-date the dividend doesn't matter. But what it represents is what's important. It represents stable cashflows and earnings. More often a company with excess cash CANNOT invest it at a better rate than an investor. In fact the large companies that don't pay dividends are more likely to use the cash for stupid aquistitions. If you are a growing company it's one thing, but for a company like MO, all they will do is buy other public companies at a massive premium and then proceed to destroy more shareholder value during integration. The tech companies are the one exception. They hold onto cash because they don't know where their industry is going and the cash horde provides a warchest if they need to quickly break into a new market.