Online Stock Trading

(At the end of this article is an update)

So far only two people have signed up and it ends tonight. The next person who signs up has a 33% chance of winning. Which brings me to a good point: “is it worth signing up?” A little surprised that more people haven’t signed up for it (it’s easy to do, just leave a comment), I decided to present this like a gambler would. If you play a lottery that costs you $10 to enter, and you have a 50% probability of winning, and if you win you earn $30 upon winning, should you play it?

The way to determine the answer is to create an “expected value.” The way to do that in this case is to determine that in long run (with the 50% chance of winning and $30 pot) you would win $15, on average in the long run. Because it only costs you $10 to enter, you would, on balance always make a profit. You will always (again in the long run) make $1.50 for every $1 you spend.

In casinos, most games will lose you a nickel for every dollar. Spend $1, get $0.95 back. In state-run scratch off tickets, it’s much, much worse.

But what of this Starbucks card? $10, no entry fee. This one’s a little different because the likelihood of winning decreases as more people enter. At what point does it become not worth it? It’s free to enter, and so far only two people have entered. The next person has a one-third chance of winning (assuming they don’t own a website and get a second entry). This means that they should expect a $3.33 payout for nothing. The next person after that, $2.50, them $2.00 (to match 25% then 20% chance of winning).

But because so few people have entered it, I must assume that there is some cost. So let’s say it’s the relative hassle of entering a comment. Also, let’s assume that if you were employed as a “comment enterer” the pay wouldn’t be that high (a teenager could do it). Pretending that comment entering could even earn you $8.00 an hour, then how much would entering a comment cost you? It takes 8 seconds to say “enter me” and hit submit—the cost would be less than two cents.

So, the third person who enters will lose two cents of their time, for $3.33 in expected winnings. That’s $3.33 earned in 8 seconds! As an hourly rate, that comes out to $1,494.67 an hour exactly. As more people sign up, the probability of winning decreases and so would the hourly rate, but even still the 25th person to sign up would earn, in the long run with a game like this, $172.32 an hour for their time spent submitting “enter me” to my post. At some point this earning power passes below the $8 an hour—it’s at 281. The 281st person would still make just over $8 an hour, but the 282nd person would make just less. Remember now, only two people have signed up.

Looking at it this way, how says you now? Here is the card giveaway post.

And for the geeks out there, here’s the expected value table.

(***Update: Since posting this, there are now 5 people signed up, 1 with a site post, for a total of 6 entries)

(This first paragraph was written with intended complication—to avoid the hassle, you may skip it and still hit the main course starting in the second paragraph—new traffic persuades me to go fishing).

I think different kinds of people react in widely different ways to objectively bad situations. Did you catch the nuance there? I placed it at the end after we all got thinking about differences. But the moment some of us might snag that nuance, even fewer of us would see the kind of hidden joke. First, what’s an objectively bad situation? Having both arms blown off? That would seem to be objectively bad. There shouldn’t be any question. The fact that there shouldn’t be any question makes the scenario of widely differing reactions kind of the silly part. But we all know this is going to have to come full circle to the stock market, after all, the title of this article indicates precisely what we’re going to talk about—presumably, an objectively bad stock market: one where values fall and where the future seems uncertain. I hope to defeat these seemingly objectively bad “situations.” But by doing that, I’ll be introducing reasons for widely different reactions, which is opposite of how this got started. .

So how do we win in a losing market? The first and obvious way is to “short” stocks. On one hand, I’d like to be able to talk about this more, but it’s not something I know much about. I won’t start to pretend to know something about which I know little. My instincts are wired for stock price appreciation, for finding value which is improperly assessed by the market. In all honesty, a “down” market is my long term dream come true. In a consistently gaining market, I find it harder and harder to find stocks valued at less than I think they should be. Right now I see hundreds.

So now, one obvious way to “win” in a “falling” market is to not actually expect to make significant gains in that market (I buy for price appreciation when prices are falling), but rather, to escape that market sooner, to be the first out of the gate when the ashes blow away. Another way to think of it is that, should the market fall by 20%, and you start buying heavily after it falls 10%, by the time everyone else who got scared away from buying starts breaking even (when it retraces that 20% loss), you’ll already be earning gains. And then, when they start making serious gains, you’ll be making really, really good gains. That’s one way to trounce them.

Another way to “win” is to modify your strategy to more accurately reflect the realities around you, in other words, to reassess risk. In a rapidly growing and highly optimistic economy, small, newer companies stand a far greater chance to succeed than in bad economies. Once everyone starts to clam up a bit, start tightening belts, those companies will be the first to suffer if not disappear altogether. To combat that you can become strict in your selection—you can look for fallen giants, instead of hopeful midgets.

Finally, one of my growing favorites is what I call making a “dividend play.” This should not be confused with outright dividend investing, though it can encompass many of the same benefits. The dividend play involves continuing to look for undervalued companies, but instead of basing your selection on the premise that “if they can grow, introduce new products, etc, their price will likely go up”, introduce another premise that “because this dividend yielding stock’s price has fallen so much, so that their yield has risen so much, if they can maintain their dividend, their yield should normalize causing their price to go up.” Now, assuming they do in fact keep their dividend (and many do during poor economic times), we’ve removed the vast margin of our risk. Now we don’t even care how they grow or perform, all we care about it their long-term survival. In the meantime, while we wait for market conditions to improve, we could earn some of those dividends, which would offset share price losses, and if we accumulate in bits and pieces as the market falls, we lose less and less as time goes on and will earn more and more when it recovers.

So in the end none of these strategies force us to completely rethink our game. We can still buy good companies. Those who really want to wait it out on the sidelines could end up performing the classic mistake of waiting too long, and when they get back in, they might be buying at the top then soon selling at the bottom. By always buying, we can always be at that bottom.

As I speak, this blog is getting exponential traffic from users using Stumble Upon. Simply put, it’s getting rocked. This being my first significant traffic breakthrough, I’d like to thank everyone for the thumbs up. It would appear that the main article getting Stumbled is 52 Ways To Profit From The Falling US Dollar, written on December 3rd.

To see the stumble effect, check out this screenshot from Sitemeter (as of 11:15pm EST):

To put it in perspective, 5% 8% of all the traffic that has ever come to this blog has come in just the last two four hours alone . Again, thanks to everyone who’s enjoying the posts. I’ll update more soon.

***Update (11:41 pm): Secondary article seems to be How To Make A Million Dollars In About 8 Years. What’s a bit of mystery is the relative lack of Diggs. Perhaps because of StumbleUpon’s toolbar? In other words, people wouldn’t typically use both? That would be my assumption.

A lot of people I know would really love to make a million dollars. Can you imagine what you could do with that? Besides your initial spending spree (I think we almost all would do the same initial actions—pay off some bills, fix up a car, repair something or other in our house; in other words, we would get “safe”), think of all the ways you could really start maximizing your potential. If you were me, you would finally get your ass back in school, go to grad school, whatever. Or you might look at the people in your life around you who you love and start to try and help them.

So what’s the problem? When I ask all these people what they’re going to do about it, things get muddy—and fast. They have no plan. It’s as if their dreaming stopped at the dreaming, as if somehow the bag of money would end up falling right out of the sky. “Man would that be their day.” They never get any further than that. If you want to become a millionaire, you really have to plan your way into it. You can’t just hope that your $150,000 house (for which you have a mortgage) will grow in value by more than 600%, especially these days. You really have to really goddamned do something about it. So let’s do something about it.

First of all, as the title indicates, I want to look at doing this in a relatively short period of time. No doubt saving a million bucks over the course of lifetime is doable, but is it desirable? To be able to retire when you are of the age to retire? That’s great. Old, and debilitated, now we can (finally?) have some fun. This doesn’t seem all that desirable. I want to be able to actually enjoy doing things with the wealth, and I want you to think about being able to do the same. So let’s go (but more quickly).

So there’s just no way around it. First, we simply have to do all the math. But don’t worry, I’ll help. And besides, most of it is easy. Once we actually start doing the calculating you’ll see quickly why most people never make it. It can be hard to make a million. But also, most people who think they want to make it, never actually go through this exercise, never see what obstacles they have, and hence, never overcome them and never end up making it.

So let’s start. The obvious beginning is to start mattress stuffing. Shelling away cash at some regular pace will be nothing short of an exercise in futility. In order to stow away a million bucks in eight years with this method, we’d have to shell out an ice cold twenty-four hundred dollars every week (Click this or any image to enlarge):

Not cool. We’d have to be wealthy before we can get wealthy. The first upgrade to this is obvious: “duh, let’s earn some interest.” Ok, let’s skip all the regular mainstream bank savings accounts (they’re awful—my wife’s Chase savings presently offers an amazing 0.35%—which is why she has thirty-six cents in it) and move right on to one of my favorites, ING Direct’s Orange Savings Account. Presently at 4.20% (12 times Chase’s) it annihilates regular savings accounts and it’s FDIC insured. But this doesn’t really solve anything either:

Even with the severely heightened interest rate, in order to get a million in eight years, we would have to invest over seven hundred thousand initially. So we have the same problem: we’d have to be wealthy before we can get wealthy. Not good. To get a million, even saving with a decent rate, we’d have to start off with much more than most of us has. Have you caught on to what we’ve just done? Most everyone is familiar with our good old rate formulas. What we’re doing is beginning to manipulate them. Given a fixed amount of time, and a fixed ending balance, we picked a rate and found an initial principle that would get us where we want to be with the rate we can easily achieve. But because this rate is not near good enough for those of us without three quarters of a million sitting around, we’ll have to go higher. How much higher? Look at the next graph. The rate formulas have four variables, Initial Principle, Ending Amount, Interest Rate, and Time. Our Time and Ending Amount are fixed (we want 1M in 8 years), so this shows the relationship between the other two variables, the rate and the initial principle, in other words, all the rates at all the different initial amounts that we can use to get a million in 8 years:

As you can see, almost any normal rate is insufficient if we don’t have a quarter million or more to earn interest on, and even if we had that much we’d need a remarkably high rate of about 18% per year. So much for our ING savings account. But you see, that’s why we’re doing all this. We’re doing all the things that the people who never make it don’t do. Conversely, this allows us to avoid doing, then failing, from all the things they might try. In other words, they might after all, have that ING account.

It should be plain that in order to do this, we’re going to have to start thinking big. No more nickel and diming your way to prosperity here—forget it. If you’re going to do it, you have to damned well do it. For starters, the next thing we can do is combine the two methods from above. The first one with a consistent savings amount combined with the interest bearing ideas from the second one. This will be kind of like an annuity, a mortgage in reverse.

So if we start saving a stream of money that, with the growing balance all earns interest, we’ll finally start seeing some results. Using a modest (modest compared to the $2000+ mattress stuffing from above) amount of say $80 from every bi-weekly paycheck, earning a sizeable interest rate of say 12.60% (more on the rate soon), all combined with an initial investment of $2000, we’ll get the million in September of 2039:

What does this mean? It means that even given regular payments, and a high interest rate, and an initial balance, it will still take much time to get to that million. How much of a bi-weekly payment will it take to reach a million in 8 years (assuming everything from above remains the same)? About $2,460 every other week will get us there in 8 years, which is interesting, because in our opening mattress stuffing example, this was how much we’d need every week instead of every two. The interest makes up about half of what we need. Still with me? (Now we see just how hard becoming a millionaire quickly can be—but I’m not done yet). In order to actually be able to do this we’re really going to have to push the envelope here. Assuming we don’t have a few hundred grand to start with, and assuming we’re really pushing the limit on what kind of interest we can earn (I’ll still come back to this), in order to stay within our 8 year time frame, we’re going to have to mess around with the amount we shell out every paycheck. But because we can’t shell out $2,460 every other week, let’s start much smaller and end much larger. What if we start with $60 every other week for the first year, then double it in the second? Then double that in the third, and so on? If we can manage that, we’ll cross over the million mark in July of 2016, or in about 8 years:

Before looking at this more though, let’s look at that interest rate. If you think 12.60% is ridiculous, don’t. I can think / of / three high income funds right off the top of my head that earn 13% or better and haven’t skipped a dividend in years. Hell some are even over 20%; and presumably, you could assuage your risk by diversifying ownership among many different ones that cover different industries. So back to our final solution. If we start in the first year setting aside $60 every other week for that whole year, then $120 during the second and so on, you might have noticed that by the end, to get a million in 8 years (starting with almost nothing), we would be forking out over fifteen thousand dollars every other week. But this is the whole purpose of the exercise: to push the limits on everything attainable to achieve maximum results in minimal time. If getting to the end seems unreasonable, try to raise the rate, increase the initial payment (to something higher than $60) or take a little longer to get there. But is doubling that payment every year really that unreasonable? I’m going to tell you that I don’t think it is. Think about this: once you got even a couple years into the experiment, you’d have saved tens of thousands of dollars. By about that time, after having continued to increase your saving amount, you’d be down to no cable, no DVD rentals, no luxuries (depending on how much you make and how much you could stomach). Food, house, car pool. But also, at about this time, you’d have a complete bankroll and quite realistically, you’d be an expert on making vast quantities of money in short time frames. Don’t you think people would be willing to hear, and even pay for, a story like that? Essentially, just by doing something remarkable, suddenly that initial remarkable feat would now be a source of additional income. As you continued then to remarkably amass a fortune in such short time, both your credibility and your notoriety would increase. The experiment would become self-indulging.

Think this is all impossible? Look at John Chow. In only around a single year he’s doing (and making) what our now meager example would have us do in over eight years. He’s making over $25,000 a month from a blog, that essentially is telling people the details about his making money from his blog. In other words, you don’t even have to be nearly as good as him to get there (though it would take you longer than his one year). And it wouldn’t even have to a blog—you could possibly write a book, or do presentations, whatever. Or for that matter, using your initial cash pile you could start a business, then use that business as a cash cow that would fund your million dollar experiment. The reason so many workaday members of society want but never get that million (and certainly not in 8 years) is because they never sit down and do what we just did: learn the hard way that traditional savings concepts simply will not cut it. You have to think very big, and then use that bigness to make it all even bigger.

And even though John’s blog is about money, you could fit into any number of other categories that suit your interests better. Only the top few sites in any category will make the most serious money, but the remarkable thing about the Internet is that there are no limits to the categories; you could make any site and gear toward making it the best in that class. Then use that increasing greatness to make it even greater, all the while making more money. Simply put, you have to start it and treat it like a business.

Another example is Shane at the Wall Street Fighter:

Look at what he’s been able to achieve in such a short time. He’s gaining in such popularity because he posts some of the funniest things around. Even more though, besides just all the funnies, he often posts links to completely useful stuff too. In other words, his site is becoming “best in his category” right before our eyes. Of course, I have immense respect for him because he’s also a fitness buff from Chicago—he’s really passionate about running (anyone fitness crazed in this Large America earns my devoted hand shake).

So getting to a million in 8 years is not easy, but unless you look at all the fundamentals involved you don’t even stand a chance. What if you’ve started with more money than what was used in the example? Or want to use different rates? Click here to download a spreadsheet with the rate formulas and some annuity tables. Now that you know what you need to know, you can make a million in 8 years; but you’ll have to be good. I’ll see you on the other side…

Don’t get me wrong, we’re all gentlemen here. As your humble host though, I reserve the right to cuss when it’s time to cuss. We’re all big boys. Now as men here (and the very occasional woman) we have the deserved right to express either astonishment or even outright dismay at the market’s behavior today. I won’t lie: with all the talk of a quarter point reduction over the last several weeks, I was nearly certain that it was priced in, thoroughly. Any talk of a half-point reduction was mere sideline wishful thinking, but now, after the Titanic is underwater, all the talk is about the disappointment of the rate cut, so meager as it was. Also, don’t get me wrong here, I think some thorough market cleansing vis-à-vis a market downturn is healthy if not even desirable—in other words, I don’t think extreme strength in the market is ultimately sustainable, but what can I say? I could really use a good rally about now. In fact, it feels like we’ve been limping along for months now. Haven’t we though? All right already! I’m all for buying into weakness—to the bone, but I can’t keep buying if no one else wants to buy because the prospects of the most prosperous nation on earth aren’t so pleasing; to the contrary, they seem to be rather miserable. And why? Because we can lend all damned day long but never pay our bills? Where’s the get up off the old arse and go to damned work attitude that pervaded half the damned globe for half the damned modern era? What now? It’s all about easy money I guess. Lenders wanting money they can’t have from consumers who want things they can’t afford. Meanwhile, the rest of scrabble around breaking our backs trying to do the right thing. No easy money for us. To hell with them all.

Ok, I’ve vented now. Thank you.

Of course, I don’t mean that literally; not in the “close your positions by market close” kind of way. What I mean (as strange as it might sound) is the um, actually “trade during the day” way. Believe it or not, I don’t actually have the opportunity to physically place trades during market hours (I’ve mentioned this before, to some peoples’ surprise). I’ve relied almost exclusively on limit orders set prior to the market open either the night before or in the morning of each and every day. In some respects this has been a good thing: I always get what I want, independently of how the market decides to behave after news blurbs start flying over land, sea, and through air. But in another respect, it’s often frustrating: I feel blindfolded. Hell, I am blindfolded.

But not today. I had accrued so much paid time off at my job that I had to take it now, before the end of the year. They do the “use it or lose it” thing. So like wow like. I’m just going to have to get at least twenty-five grand going so I can do this full time . That was fun. Being able to actually see what the hell I was doing, to see what the hell was happening was pretty much enough to make me think twice about ever deciding to not do this full time in the future.

I was able to swap out my (PHY) and (C) holdings for a fresh dance with (ACH) and a small nickel-dime job with (PMI). More than likely, I’ll be reentering Citigroup soon, but I couldn’t pass up clamping down on more than sixteen months of savings account level gains in six days. Also, it looks like (HW) is finally implementing their share buyback. With any luck the stock price inflation will scare off some of those damned shorts. They’re killing me. After that, one more decent quarterly report from them and I should be just that much closer to my island. My island? Oh I thought I told you. Ah, you don’t know the island thing…

Well how about this then? Did you know about the Starbucks card? The free one? 10 bucks, me to you, for nothing? Yeah, the one where all you have to say is, “enter me” in a comment? Oh, of course you knew! It’s right here.

But alas, free to think and to see today, just so you know, I still placed all my orders as limits .

As you might know (well, at least those very careful readers might—those who keep tabs on my portfolio without my needing to shine a light on it), I decided to avoid one of the things I often dislike about many commentators who write about the stock market: they can talk all day long but you’ll never know if they have the stomach to eat what they say you should eat. In other words, a few days ago, after telling you that something looked particularly appetizing, I went out to eat. After saying that Citigroup looked like a strong buy I went ahead and bought some. Part of the problem with talking the talk when one then doesn’t walk the walk is completely justifiable: sometimes there are more great stocks available then there is money to spend on them. But even still, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to show in the best way possible just how much I meant what I said.

So guess what? I meant what I said. The only remaining risks I see are the high probability that they will have another major write down and the somewhat smaller probability that they could reduce their dividend to save cash. If either or both of these occur, I think the stock could slide some more, but I do have some serious doubts that it could fall by many margins more. My approach then is going to be one of slow and steady accumulation; however, during this accumulation I hope to continue to grow my cash reserve so that in the event that they do slide some more, I can enter a fairly serious position.

I better be off for now, I’ve got to find some way to rid my tongue of that inconceivable taste of cash.

I was carpooling this morning with my friend when we entered a discussion about the merits and drawbacks of using ADR’s as a means to benefit from already strong overseas companies during these weak times of the U.S. dollar. Even though the conversation was general, it got me thinking. Ultimately, later in the day, I concluded that an obvious way would be one where successful foreign companies also happened to pay dividends. Once I got home this evening, I decided to snoop around, and while snooping, I found a plethora of material on the subject. Keep in mind though that profiting from further decline in the dollar requires two things: you actually have to bet against the dollar, and you have to be right. If you believed me then, then remember that now, after watching the steady decline of the dollar, it might actually be the worst time to bet against the dollar. Personally, I’m undecided. Either way though, here you have them:

This article discusses 5 overseas companies which could benefit from a falling dollar. All 5 are stocks you can buy here.

This article discusses 3 strategies that could make gains with the dollar’s fall. Of particular note is the Falling U.S. Dollar Fund which gains on the dollar’s decline. Fascinating.

This article mentions 4 participants (really one company and 3 categories) in the dollar’s movement. Noteworthy is it’s mention of Google being a winner because such a large percentage of its revenues now come from overseas.

This article discusses 7 ways, some quite literal, to profit from a fall in the dollar. Some of those mentioned are geared toward daily living, others are more specifically related to outright investing, while another actually points the way to how completely normal Americans can hold mutual funds denominated in foreign currencies.

This article talks about 2 relatively new U.S. dollar ETFs: one that is bearish, one bullish.

This article talks about 7 companies with vast overseas opportunities which can profit in two ways: from the fact that many foreign markets are performing better than domestic ones, and from the fact that those higher earnings can be translated into even higher gains once they are converted back into US dollars. Also of particular note is the use of foreign dividends.

This site regularly posts material about metals and other commodities, many of which are directly related to events surrounding the dollar’s decline. Besides all the good material though, I really like the writer.

This article has 1 major discussion about dollar trends and elaborates on what those trends can mean for other wider arenas, including gold plays.

This article talks about at least 11 other ETFs that are currency funds where one could profit from volatility in the U.S. dollar market without having to resort to Forex trading.

This book is 1 that would seem to be prophetic. It was written in 2004.

This article discusses 11 ways to evaluate things around you to verify that they are consistent with the dollar’s decline.

Also, remember to enter the Starbucks gift card giveaway. It runs until December 16th. All you have to do is leave a comment. Check it out.

Everyone knows by now about my fondness for C. Arabica beverages. But because I couldn’t be so selfish so as to captivate my love for coffee-related drinks to myself exclusively, it’s time me thinks to export some of that indulgence. Well, I’ll provide the cash anyways, you can do the indulging. Unlike last time which turned out to be a bit too complicated, I’ll make this one much easier: a simple lottery.

To receive an entry, do one or both of the following:

• Just mention your entry in a comment below, and

• If you have a website, mention this contest on your site and get a second entry.

On Sunday, December 16th I will randomly pick a name from all the entries that were submitted by midnight eastern standard time on Saturday, December 15th. After I announce the winner, I’ll provide some contact instructions so we can get it mailed out.

The following image will show the number of entries and will update daily:

To begin, I should disclose that I don’t invest for dividends. I invest for stock price appreciation. In fact, I’m so strict about this, that I don’t even take a company’s dividend into consideration when I buy it. If it has one, and I happen to be holding it for a distribution period, great. Bonus. Period. With that said, I recently purchased some shares of Prospect Street High Income Portfolio (PHY). Under normal circumstances one would only buy this for its dividend, but not I said the fly. I bought it because other people buy it for its dividend. Huh? I bought it because after examining a few years’ worth of activity I discovered that by and large, over the last couple of years, its yield has averaged about 8.8%, and even though this is the average, it more often has a yield closer to 8.5% or even a bit less. To see this history and some other interesting things, take a look at the following two-axis graph showing the share price and the yield together:

As you can see, because their dividend is so consistent, the two lines are almost perfect inverses. So why the high present yield? Two words: Junk bonds. Non-investment grade bonds. How fun. So, as the credit-whatever-you-want-to-call-it thingy (I’ve now heard over thirty-seven variations including the words “crisis,” “woe,” “crunch,” “fiasco,” etc) continues to weigh on peoples’ minds, companies that are involved in anything credit-related are being reexamined as having higher risk. With this stock, we can only assume that buyers or prior owners anticipated that the dividend would drop. If we pull out our calculators here, in order for the current stock’s price to justify the more justifiable yield, the dividend would have to drop all the way to 25 ¢ per share per year, or to just 2.1 ¢ per share per month, in other words, down more than 12%. Ouch. However, this hasn’t happened. The dividend has stayed consistent throughout the year. In fact, the last time the dividend changed, it went up—it’s been going up about 5% per year for years.

If we can assume that the management team is always concerned about it’s own performance and perception to the marketplace and if we can assume that the amount of cash they have is growing at least as fast as their dividend payout has been, then we should be able to assume that the dividend will keep on coming. We should be able to assume that even given the current market circumstances, they have plenty of elbow room. But remember, I’m not here for the dividend. I’m here because I think the current yield is too high. I think it doesn’t justify the increased risk a higher yield should indicate because I don’t think that risk is there. Of course, the market seems to be disagreeing with me at the moment.

So, regardless of that dividend for my sake, I think the yield will prove to look enticing for others who are looking for the dividend—so enticing in fact that I expect the price to appreciate somewhat significantly which will bring the yield back in line. What’s even better is that they often increase the dividend in March. So here are some hypothetical scenarios: If the dividend does stay the same, in order for the yield to come back to even the high range of 8.8%, the stock price will have to go all the way up to $3.25 which would be a 16% gain over my initial and future entry points. So long as it keeps falling under around $2.80. I’ll snap a few up. Even better though is if they do in fact raise the dividend in March from 2.4 ¢ per share to 2.5 ¢ per share, the share price will have to rise all the way to $3.39 which would be a 21% gain. In the meantime, hell, I might even earn some of those dividends. If a quarter passes prior to the yield correction that I am anticipating, I can tack on another 2.5-3% on top of those gains. Might be Merry Christmas after Christmas.