Perhaps an obvious Choice - Better than great returns - better than great dividends- but can reits keep it up?

Natural Gas may be a Natural Investment - consisten returns and great dividends

A great find - consistent returns - great dividends - i want it!!

returns could be better, but it solidly consistent, great dividends

great stock - great dividends

Something to Consider-Good Dividends Too

Reasons for Investing

Many of us have our own reasons for wanting to invest and save our money. I seek early retirement. I have realized long ago that my dreams do not include working in a job where I have to wait for my paycheck. I have accepted this as my nature and I ask that you don't judge. But I am sure many of you would like to retire early and perhaps work at or enjoy something that, at the moment, seems like too much of a luxury.

Our current level of saving may just allow my family and I to live our dream. It takes discipline and the ability to forgo some things that we, and mostly I miss. The ends justify the means.

I invite you to share your ideas and insight into your goals. We currently have different active portfolios, each created for different needs. One for retirement, one for children's education and one for short term needs. The market will always experience down periods. However, it has always beaten any savings account.

Please pass on any and all investment ideas. Share your thoughts and please remember that the key to investing is patience.

Thank you

AT&T ending Cingular name on wireless

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- AT&T Inc. will begin next week to extinguish the brand of cellphone operator Cingular, built up with billions of dollars over a few years, to imprint its more-than-century-old name firmly across its services.

AT&T (Charts), which took full control of No. 1 U.S. mobile carrier Cingular with its $86 billion purchase of BellSouth Corp. last month, will launch a campaign Monday to mark the change.

"We did not enter that decision lightly," Wendy Clark, vice president of advertising at AT&T, said in an interview. "We came to understand that consumer customers and business customers alike are looking for a single provider. We heard it so consistently across the marketplace."

In its first stage, Cingular will share its orange logo of a bouncing jack with the AT&T globe logo on everything from television ads to sales uniforms and monthly bills.

AT&T's name and logo will eventually replace Cingular in a process expected to take several months, with the exact timing determined as more customer feedback comes in, Clark said.

But with its long and complicated history, AT&T may face customer confusion over its name, marketing experts said. Also, Cingular built up a reputation among younger customers who may not easily associate with the AT&T brand.

At stake are AT&T's efforts to promote its bundle of phone, Internet and video services against a growing number of rivals, including cable operators and Web providers, such as Comcast (Charts) and Time Warner (Charts), parent company of CNNMoney.com.

One new ad will portray a familiar Cingular image - grain harvesters mowing a field to represent "bars" showing maximum cellphone reception. But in a new take, the harvesters will change direction and mow the AT&T globe out of the stalks.

"It's a tough proposition," said Hayes Roth, chief marketing officer at brand agency Landor Associates. "Multiple brands within any company is expensive. Arguably they don't have much choice, they've made a stand now that they've invested back in the core brand."

Cingular spent nearly $1 billion on media advertising in the first nine months of 2006, up from about $920 million in the same period during 2005, according to the latest data from tracking firm TNS Media Intelligence.

For the remainder of their businesses, AT&T spent nearly $600 million on media ads in the nine-month period, while BellSouth spent just over $100 million, TNS said.

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Great Growth and Dividends to Spice it up! May I say holy cow to ATI!!

United States Steel - Something to Consider

Steel & Iron - Great Steady Returns - Small Dividends

Urban Outfitters - Perhaps a speculator's dream - no dividends- but cheap and splits like crazy

The Zecco Free Trading Catch.

What is the minimum amount required to open an account?
A minimum deposit of $2,500 is required to open an account. Once your account is opened, you can use those funds to purchase securities leverage for margin purposes or use as you see fit. It is and always will be your money. If your account balance falls below $2,500, we do not restrict or close your account.

Where will Oil Go?

Another day, another swoon for oil. It seems that the price of a barrel of crude, which had soared to within striking distance of $80 over the summmer, is now headed down to $50, or less. Indeed, after yesterday's drop to just over $54 a barrel, crude was passing hands just moments ago at $53.55. In response, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, will be meeting to address the decline in prices.

Falling oil prices should be a distinct positive for Wall Street. Yet, the stock market is barely managing to edge forward these days, and only late rallies are enabling equities to end some sessions in the black. Yesterday was a prime example, as a late positve reversal allowed the Dow to finish ahead by 26 points. The S&P 500 Index, meantime, gained three points, while the NASDAQ, buoyed by a gain in Apple shares, rose 16 points, to pace the advance.

The news background also was positive, with Alcoa reporting better-than-expected earnings. (The aluminum maker was the first of the 30 Dow components to post quarterly net figures.) Also, the nation's trade imbalance edged a bit lower, thanks to falling oil imports.

Nevetheless, the bulls remain cautious. Perhaps it is the likelhood that the Federal Reserve will now wait a while before lowering rates that's tempering their optimism. On the other hand, it could be lingering worries about the economy and corporate earnings that are failing to ignite the bulls. But then again, it may just be that Wall Street needs to digest six months of steady gains in equity prices before moving higher again in earnest.

Whatever the reason, the stock market seems set to open today's session on a lower note once again when trading commences in about an hour from now.

Something to look at - great yearly dividend

ETFs: 5 smart strategies

Exchange-traded funds can cut your investment costs, lower your tax bill and simplify your life. Just make sure you handle them with care.

(MONEY Magazine) - When Exchange-Traded funds, or ETFs, came on the scene in the 1990s, they looked like the rarest of new financial products - one that actually made money for you instead of just your broker.

The earliest ETFs emulated the Standard & Poor's 500 and other broad stock indexes. They were like traditional index funds, only better, offering the same one-stop diversification but with lower fees and tax bills.

As more financial advisers and small investors caught on to ETFs' advantages, the companies that issue them began expanding beyond major indexes to narrower slices of the economy such as health care and technology.

Again, the benefits to you were clear: Avoid the high management fees of sector funds and lower the risk that comes with picking stocks. It's no surprise that investment pros were soon calling ETFs the coolest thing to come along since, well, index funds, and predicting that ETFs would revolutionize the way you invest.

And then things went from cool to, like, crazy.

Not content to limit themselves to major market benchmarks, ETF sellers began churning out dozens of funds aimed at ever smaller market subsectors, including leisure and entertainment, networking and semiconductors.

The number of ETFs has ballooned from just 30 with $34 billion in assets six years ago to more than 200 today holding more than $300 billion. ETFs are quickly becoming a means of turning long-term index fund investing on its head, providing an easy way to make risky investments in whatever slice of the market happened to be hot five minutes ago.

Wanna invest in a nanotechnology or clean-energy ETF? You can -- although it's debatable whether you should. Ditto for that euro ETF you can buy if you believe that the value of the dollar will fall.

That doesn't mean ETFs are now so dangerous that they're only for the foolhardy. You can still cash in on their original promise if you ignore the hype and instead focus on how they might fit into your long-term investing strategy.

With that attitude in mind, here are five smart ways you can make the most of ETFs.

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Wide-Moat Stocks with High Dividend Yields

By Josh Peters, CFA

If there was any strategy that might be considered a push-button exercise in investing, selecting a stock for a long, attractive dividend record ought to be it. When picking stocks for Morningstar DividendInvestor, I love to see a company with a long stretch of rising dividend payments. Combine decades of consistent payments, predictable dividend increases and a decent yield, and what could be left worry about?

The trouble is that this investment case isn't yet complete. While the dividend adds an impressively sharp instrument to the investor's toolbox, it isn't enough to buy a stock based on dividend history alone. It's still critical to obtain one more characteristic of a well-chosen investment: an economic moat.

Frequent readers of Morningstar stock research will recognize the concept, but it bears repeating: An economic moat is the competitive advantage (or better yet, advantages) that allows a firm to earn superior profits on a sustainable basis--and to protect those profits from competitive pressures.

Long dividend records and the presence of a moat frequently run together, but a favorable dividend record cannot itself be the moat. In fact, when the dividend record breeds complacency, it's as likely to hurt investors as it is to help.

WIN) was a textbook case of a longtime dividend-payer with no economic moat. I covered the stock back in 2001, and the situation made quite an impression on me. Here was one of the largest supermarket chains in the country, with seven decades of dividends behind it, available at better than a 3% yield when the S&P was offering half that.

Walmart (wmt)whose ultralow costs negated whatever competitive advantage Winn-Dixie once had. The dividend record pretended to offer investors some comfort, but as a safety net that record was full of holes. Soon enough, the company was forced to slash its dividend 80% and then omit it entirely. The shares have since lost more than 80% of their early-2001 value.

By contrast, a wide economic moat puts the dividend in good stead. Consider Pitney Bowes (PBI

Sponsored by:

PBI), the nation’s largest purveyor of postage meters. In recent years it has been earning a splendid 50% return on equity--and its dividends alone have been running at some 20% of equity. If Pitney Bowes had no moat, any other firm could (hypothetically) enter the postage-meter business and expect the same 50% return. Of course, the added competition would drive prices down, eroding Pitney's earning power and eventually putting those fat dividends at risk.

Fortunately for the firm and its shareholders, Pitney Bowes has a wonderfully wide moat. A potential competitor would have to get licensed by the U.S. Postal Service, achieve the same size and scale as Pitney has now, and displace millions of loyal Pitney customers. Thus we can have a large measure of confidence that these fat economic profits--and the substantial dividends they support--should go on and on and on.

In Morningstar DividendInvestor, our newsletter for the income-oriented crowd, we require at least a narrow economic moat before recommending a stock. As far as I'm concerned, a truly secure dividend-payer has to have one. Sure, this rule eliminates some high-yielding stocks from the ranks of automakers, chemical manufacturers, and supermarket chains, but I figure that what might be lost by choice is more than made up for with quality.

Six Principles for Smart ETF Investing

n September, Morningstar will launch its newest monthly publication--Morningstar ETFInvestor. In the following article, Sonya Morris, the newsletter's editor, outlines her innovative, fundamentals-based approach for making money in exchange-traded funds. For more on Morningstar ETFInvestor and to learn how to preorder the first issue, please click here. With your first issue, you'll receive three free reports: The ABCs of ETFs, Choosing ETFs the Morningstar ETFInvestor Way, and The ETF Numbers that Matter--and Why.

ETFs can be great tools to add to your financial toolbox. They're cheap, flexible, and tax-efficient. But to benefit from what they have to offer, you must use them intelligently. That means resisting "short-termism" and avoiding the temptation to pile into the hottest performing funds. As editor of our newest publication, Morningstar ETFInvestor--which is set to debut in September--I plan to apply the same kind of long-term, valuation-sensitive thinking that my colleagues and I employ in our analysis of stocks and mutual funds. In fact, I'll be flanked by Morningstar's team of 90 equity analysts and 25 fund analysts. Morningstar's unique expertise in both arenas will help me marry the two disciplines to offer a distinctive view on ETF investing. Read on for more on the underlying philosophy behind the newsletter.

To truly tap into all that ETFs have to offer, I think a successful investor must:

Adopt a Contrarian Point of View
You should be skeptical of the funds that attract scads of cash and generate a lot of buzz. View a fund's popularity as a warning sign rather than an invitation, and remember that eye-popping returns--while alluring--are simply not sustainable over the long haul. Too many investors pile into the hottest performing fund just as it's about to cool down. On the other hand, many of the smartest and most successful investors look for opportunities in hidden or unloved corners of the market. We've found that it pays to go against the grain. Our studies have shown that the stock-fund categories with the greatest outflows usually trump the most popular categories over the next three years. I think the best ideas are often lurking where few people are looking. That's why you'll often find me directing investors away from the most popular market segments, such as energy and real estate, to areas that can't seem to get any love, like technology and mega-caps.

Be Valuation Conscious
Smart investors look for opportunities where there's a mismatch between a stock's price and its true worth. That's why Morningstar's stock analysts spend their time trying to identify stocks that trade at prices that don't adequately reflect their fair values. Similarly, there are times when an ETF's price gets out of whack with the fair values of the securities it owns. I'll rely on Morningstar's equity analysis to identify those opportunities and to uncover funds that hold large slugs of stocks that, in our analysts' views, are trading at attractive prices. Along with my recommendations for long-term core holdings, each issue of the newsletter will also include opportunistic plays where an ETF's price is out of step with our view of the portfolio's cumulative fair value.

Pay Attention to the Fundamentals
My colleagues and I like fund managers who have a deep understanding of the financial characteristics of the companies in which they invest. Similarly, our stock analysts cull through financial statements to gain a clearer understanding of a firm's health. You can approach ETF investing in the same way by paying attention to the underlying fundamental data on the fund and its holdings. I favor ETFs that hold sizable stakes of financially sturdy firms that generate respectable growth rates and returns on equity. By sticking with quality holdings, it's easier to weather near-term bumps and maintain a long-term view.

Maintain a Long-Term Mind-Set
Sometimes it seems that the markets are growing more and more short term in focus. Quarterly earnings reports get way too much media hype. And many fund managers I talk to report that much of the trading in the market is short term in nature. I think you can gain an advantage by bucking this trend. In other words, be a contrarian in your time frame as well. Maintain a long-term focus, and buy to hold. In my opinion, when it comes to trading, less is more. That's particularly important for ETF investors, because you pay brokerage commissions each time you trade an ETF. Remember that commission costs can quickly eat away your investment profits.

Another key ingredient to long-term thinking is patience. Long-term investors can't afford to get rattled by short-term setbacks. Very few good investment ideas pan out immediately; most need time to ripen. To be successful, you must have the patience and discipline to stick to your guns as long as the fundamentals remain in your favor.