$$$ review for week ending Dec.11, 2015:
- Net worth
“The MEDIAN net worth of folks 65-74 is $190k. That means half of everyone has more and the other half has less, which is a far better reflection of how wealth is distributed than the “average”….”
(Source: Regarded Solutions, SeekingAlpha.com)
- Market Quick Glance
-Indices
Year-to-date returns based on Friday’s close (12/11/15) show the DJIA and S&P 500 indexes down less than 1 percent; 0.72 percent and 0.27 percent respectively. The year’s big winner so far is NASDAQ, up 5.46 percent.
-Mutual funds
Lipper’s mutual fund performance figures are published every Thursday.The data is updated weekly and provides the best one-stop-shopping overview of how various types of funds have performed over the short and long term that you’ll find anywhere.You can read abaout them all in the column to the left of Dian’s Column at http://www.Allaboutfunds.com . Please read through it every week. The more you know about how your fund’s performance measures up against other like funds, the better investor you’ll become.
That said, here are a few Lipper year-to-date performance highlights for the week ending Thursday, December 10, 2015:
-Under the World Income Fund category, Japanese Funds have rewarded their shareholders the most. Of the 51 funds included in it, the group’s average was up 11.46 percent.
-On the other hand, the biggest losing group was Latin American Funds. Of the 49 funds under that heading the group average was down 27.58 percent.
-Under the U.S. Equity Fund heading, of which there are 8,409 funds, the average group return was down 1.43 percent.
-Lipper keeps tabs on 2,637,660 fixed-income funds. Year-to-date, the average return on this lot was down 1.45 percent.
- Dividend investing: Kinda Hot and Cold Rewards
First, the hot-ish rewards….
From Morningstar’s ETF Specialist column: “Dividend Investing: Man vs. Machine …..On average, dividend-oriented ETFs beat their actively managed mutual fund counterparts in each of the four categories studied. Most of the funds in the sample were in the large-value category, where the average ETF returned 12.25% during the five years ended Sept. 30, 2015, compared with 10.67% for the average actively managed, dividend-oriented mutual fund.”
Now, the cold-ish….
If you’re a fan of dividend investing as I am –and so are most people who’ve made any money over the long haul— below is an interesting list included in USA TODAY’s Matt Krantz’s piece published 12/11/15 , ” 13 companies can’t afford their big dividends”.
“2015 S&P 500 COMPANIES PAYING OUT MORE IN DIVIDENDS THAN THEY’VE EARNED *
-Company, Symbol, Dividend yield, payout ratio
-Kinder Morgan, KMI, 12.1%, 329.6%
-ONEOK, OKE, 11.1%, 160.3%
-Williams, WMB, 8.85%, 528.8%
-Frontier Communications, FTR, 8.54%, NM **
-CenturyLink, CTL, 8.19%, 166.1%
-Iron Mountain, IRM, 7.17%, 421.4%
-Wynn Resort, WYNN, 7.15%, 359.1%
-HCP, HCP, 6.29%, 437.9%
-Spectra Energy, SE, 6.18%, 128.4%
-Murphy Oil, MUR, 6.13%, NM
-ConocoPhillips, COP, 6.11%, NM
-CenterPoint Energy, CNP, 6.03%, NM
-Mattel, MAT, 6.01, 169.2%”
(* Based on dividends and net income the past 12 months.Source: S&P Capital IQ, USA TODAY)
Full story at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2015/12/11/payout-ratio-big-dividends-afford/77115700/
- Giving
According to Wealth-X, hugely rich entrepreneurs do give.
From their recent press release,” America’s Billionaire Entrepreneurs Give Nearly US$180 Million In Lifetime, More Than Other UHNW Donor Groups”, comes this:
“America’s billionaire entrepreneurs give, on average, US$179.5 million per person to various causes during their lifetimes — more than any other ultra high net worth (UHNW) donor group — according to a new report by Wealth-X and Arton Capital….”
- Scoring a Mortgage
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported “59% of new mortgage originations (by dollar, not by number) in the 3rd quarter of 2015, were obtained by borrowers with credit scores above 780.”
I snooped around and data from the Statistic Brain Research Group showed, as of July 8, 2014, the national FICO average credit score was 691.
FICO scores range from 300 to 850.
- Mergers or let’s just call it “ DuPoints”
The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell wrote a read-worthy piece published December 11, 2015, titled “Dow and DuPont, two of America’s oldest giants, to merge in jaw-dropping mega deal”.
In case you have forgotten what these two iconic companies manufacture, here’s some of what Harwell wrote:
“Dow was founded in 1897 by chemist Herbert Henry Dow primarily as a seller of bleach, but it would become one of America’s chief suppliers of chemicals for explosives, medicines and tear gas during World War I. With the Monsanto Company, Dow would also produce Agent Orange, the toxic herbicide made infamous during and after the Vietnam War.
“DuPont was founded in 1802 as a gunpowder mill by the French-American industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont. The company would go on to develop neoprene, a synthetic rubber; corian, used in home countertops; mylar, a plastic in balloons; and the refrigerant freon.”
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