Joshua Saunders

Here are my thoughts on a select group of companies that pay dividends.  Please note, these are only my recommendations.  I own some of these, some I don’t.  Invest at your own risk after doing your own research.

Annaly (NLY) - To start with, this is one of my favorite investments at the moment.  Annaly is a REIT with a dividend yielf of 10.90% at present.  They invest primarily in mortgage backed securities and related assets.  They have been doing surprisingly well and had great returns over the last few quarterts with great growth.  They recently raised capital through stock issuance to buy mortgage backed securities from large banks.  Some analysts looked down on the issuance saying Annaly shouldn’t have to raise this capital for the investment, but the market has reacted favorably.  If the mortgage market rebounds a little bit, this holding could do wonders.  Regardless, they have a great history!

iShares Lehman Aggregate Bond (AGG) - This is an ETF that holds mostly investment grade bonds.    This will stay well clear of the subprime mess and although it is susceptible to bond defaults, they shouldn’t be significant.  Current yield is 4.81%

BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust (BPT) - This is an oil trust that pays you a royalty for oil taken out of the ground.  They don’t actually do anything but simply own the oil reserves.  So the key for holdings like this is to look at the proven reserves they control.  This holding is strongly correlated with the price of oil as you can imagine, so the stock price is extremely high at the moment, but it also has a current yield of 11.20%.  There are several other oil trusts that are also good buys, but they could be risky.

Consolidated Edison (ED) - New Yorkers know this one well, the regulated utility company.  A solid company with an amazing yield of 5.7%.

Templeton Emerging Markets Income (TEI) - Diversifying into emerging markets has been and should continue to be a wise choice.  This holding contains bonds in countries with a much better economy than the U.S. right now.  And with a yield of 6.6%, it may not be a bad deal.

General Electric (GE) - You either love them or you hate them… I love them.  You can’t argue their history and although Immelt has taken heat in the last quarter, the stock may be undervalued.  I’m looking for a rise and even taking out call options over the next year.  Regardless, the current yield is 4.00%, not too shabby and I don’t think GE is going bankrupt anytime soon.

Important Note: As I described in my previous posting, dividends change all the time.  The yields I listed above are current as of today, but they may change each quarter.  In general, you should look at its history of dividends.  They are starting to decline as prices rebounds in many industries.

Modzy.com, an online scrapbooking store, for which I am a part owner, is revamping its website platform.  As part of this massive update the site is going through, there will also be a new affiliate program.

If you have a blog or website with a high viewership of women, you can place a link on your website and earn up to 20% of all sales from visitors you refer to the Modzy.com website.  This is a great way to earn some extra passive income just by sending interested people to a scrapbooking website.  for more information, questions, or to sign up, email me at josh@modzy.com.

I recently was sent this powerpoint tutorial on the subprime mess and it is pretty damn funny.  It gives a very good overview of exactly what happened and why we are in the mess we are in.

Tutorial on the Subprime Mess

So WordPress was upgraded again, I’m not even sure what version this is; I’m not the type to care about the technical details of my blog, only that it works and you people read it.

The upgrade was a little over a week ago I believe and to tell the truth, it sucks.  The layout is awful, my window keeps freezing when I try to add images to posts, and my dashboard is a mess.  WordPress should seriously do some more testing before rolling out these upgrades.

Anyone else have trouble with WordPress?

My assistant emailed me a quote of the day which I think holds fairly true.

Keys to success… Research your idea, Plan for success, Expect success, & just plain do it! It amazes me how many people skip the last step! Practice being a “doer” and success will follow you every step of the way!

I’m still alive and I apologize for the lack of posts for a little bit.  I’m busier than ever with my regular work load, a few special projects I’m working on, advising a new startup, my MBA studies, and preparing for an international business seminar I will be going on in a week and a half to Japan.  I promise more posts will be coming soon.

If anyone lives or will be in Japan at the end of March, let me know.  I will be in Osaka and Tokyo for ten days meeting with various business executives and government officials.  My trip focuses on marketing, technology and entrepreneurship and will take me to Panasonic, Hitachi, Fujitsu, OakLawn Marketing, Toyota, Osaka University, METI, Takeda Pharmaceutical, as well as some good sightseeing and Sumo Wrestling!

All politics is about marketing.  Obama has done a fantastic job branding himself. But Hillary and others have a marketing strategy behind everything they do and every word they say.

It’s quite interesting when you actually think about it from a business standpoint. Who is their target market? For Hillary it has been women, lower-class blue collar workers and hispanics. For Obama it has been middle-class democrats, young people, and african-americans. You can see a differentiated marketing strategy in how each candidate markets to each segment.

I was watching Meet the Press this morning and what caught my attention and what is so interesting about political marketing is that you don’t only market yourself, you try to neutralize the opponent’s marketing. You don’t see this as much in business. For instance, Obama talks about change and a fresh face in Washington and Hillary talks about how Obama is a great speaker, but talk is cheap and we need someone who will take action. Hillary talks about how she has the experience (although she has little executive experience herself) and Obama counters saying we don’t need the same old experience in Washington, we need someone who can create the change.

It’s not just about branding (although it appears that way on the face). Obama is definately leading in branding. It’s also about segmentation, differentiated market strategies, knowing what each segment wants, and using an appropriate marketing mix (4P’s). In fact, political marketing is so exciting because the results are immediately measureable. In business, where results are measured in revenue, you get lagging results that may not be entireley dependent on your marketing strategy. In politics, you get near real-time results that are absolute and clearly measureable.

Over the last few weeks, I have received more emails from blog readers about virtual assistants than anything else.  So thought I would provide an update on how everything is working out and provide some advice on the best ways to handle a virtual assistant to maximize your time and money.

Here is how my assistant has done on some of the following tasks:

Task: Find software vendors with experience in a specific niche of online gaming
Result:  Quickly sent me a spreadsheet of over a dozen companies with contact people, information and websites for each.  Good job.

Task:  Detailed research on the liquor industry including trending, growth, sales, margins, legal implications and licensing, info on manufacturers, etc…
Hasn’t done a good job to date.  The data on sales and growth was very dated (1994, 1995 and 2002) and unusuable.  The information on licensing was too specific to random states, like Alaska.  Information on manufacturers was partially related to wine and beer when I needed it on distilled spirits.

Task:  Catalog products from a website by category into a spreadsheet
Done very quickly and the spreadsheet was exactly as planned.

So as you can tell, he hasn’t done well with research and information gathering, but does a good job with word processing type tasks.  Unfortunately, I need more than this, so we’ll see how he holds up with some more challenging tasks.

Some advice on how to get the most of your VA (if they’re from another country):
1)  Speak clearly and succintly.  Give direct orders.  Do not worry about coming off sounding rude.
2)  Tell the VA specifically how much time you want them to spend on the task or a time limit.  Otherwise they may be off spending 20 hours on a simple 2 hour task.
3)  Give a firm deadline.
4)  Give feedback after tasks are completed.  Let them know if something isn’t exactly to your liking or not what you were looking for.
5)  On more complicated tasks, make sure they understand the background of how and why you need the information you do.  This will help them deliver better results.

I just ate Chinese food for lunch and got one of the dumbest fortune cookie’s ever written.  It said:

Ask not what your fortune cookie can do for you but what you can do for your fortune cookie.

I am not making this up, it really says this!

Looking to start your own blog?  Want to write about business, technology, or entrepreneurship?  Try your skills out here first… be a guest blogger on Ramblings of an Entrepreneur.

I’m receiving about 200 visits a day, and constantly growing.  Write a guest post and receive some credit.  Just contact me and send me the post, I’ll give you credit for the post.  It doesn’t have to be long.

Why am I doing this?  Just to mix things up and get a fresh perspective.  I get several emails a week from people looking to start their own blogs.  Here’s a place for you to have an instant audience.

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