Remember when big banks paid big dividends? Before the financial crisis Citigroup (NYSE: C) paid a quarterly dividend of $0.54; last quarter’s dividend was $0.01. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) paid a per-share $0.64 quarterly dividend as recently as late 2008; December’s quarterly dividend… Read More

It wasn’t just bad, it was a bloodbath. The just-ended year not only gave us the back half of one of the worst economic downturns in the past century, it also marked the long-anticipated end to a storied chapter in American history as General Motors and Chrysler… Read More

Falling rents, asset values and transaction volumes during 2009 have been tough on the real-estate sector and on real-estate investment trusts (will continue to, Fitch still has a negative outlook on the domestic REIT sector for 2010. Happily, things are better in Canada. While… Read More

The key to boosting income lies in a security most investors might not be familiar with. Nevertheless, more than 1,250 of these securities trade on U.S. exchanges. They invest in every almost every possible sector and niche of the market (from stocks and bonds to… Read More

Future historians may well define our current time on Earth as the “oil age.” It is estimated that the world consumes 80-85 million barrels of oil per day. And as industrialization expands across the globe on an unprecedented scale, long-term demand is on the rise. Read More

As the world evolves, so, too, does the landscape for income investors. Emerging markets — any country in the process of rapid growth and industrialization — were once the exotic purview of Wall Street’s high-risk trading desks. Read More

Foreign stocks simply can’t be ignored. Thirty years ago, U.S. markets accounted for about 70% of the world’s stock market capitalization. That figure has fallen to about 40% today and is likely to keep falling with the rise of Brazil, India, China and others. Read More

The clock is ticking. We don’t have much time. That’s not just the opening line of the upcoming season of “24,” it’s the statistical reality of the world’s petroleum reserves. Fact: The world consumes 80 million barrels of oil every day. Read More

An unprecedented level of industrial expansion during the past two decades has not only made China wealthy. It’s made the country really dirty. Now comes the clean up. Years of industrial growth, largely powered by coal, have left China choking in smog. Cities smolder… Read More

“Give me a lever long enough,” said Archimedes, “and a place to stand, and I will move the world.” If the old Greek were alive today, he might well work for Fluor (NYSE: FLR, $41.95), one of the world’s largest public engineering and construction companies.  Fluor designs… Read More