Aflac (NYSE: AFL) is best known in the U.S. for its ‘duck ads,’ but actually earns over 75% of its money from Japan. “In Japan, once people get AFL insurance they don’t drop it (which is very important in the life and health insurance industry) with a persistency rate of 95%.
AFL currently yields 2.4%, which is nice. It has however, increased that dividend in each of the last 27 years, and over the last 15 years it has done so at a compound annual rate of 20.7%.
Tag: stocks
10 Stocks off to a Good Year
Neither the multifaceted disaster in Japan nor the domino-like progression of political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa has prevented the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ($INX) from climbing 13.4% in the first quarter of 2011. And some stocks performed as if we were living in the best of times.
Among the index’s top 10 performers was CB Richard Ellis Group (CBG), a commercial real estate company that offers services to tenants, owners, lenders and investors.
The Los Angeles company’s stock climbed 30.4% in the first quarter, helped by better-than-expected fourth-quarter financial results and an improving outlook for commercial properties.
CB Richard Ellis recently raised $800 million through term loans to purchase the real estate investment unit of ING (ING).
Some analysts think the share price has limited upside potential after soaring 68.5% in the past 12 months. Yet the commercial real estate market, considered by some “the next shoe to drop,” is turning around faster than many observers expected.
Investing in India
As investments go, India has really great long-term prospects. No doubt about it. Indeed, India has enjoyed very decent growth rates for the last decade, pulling many of its people out of poverty in the process. But investing in India…
Japan crisis puts world financial markets on edge
NEW YORK -Fears over the escalating nuclear crisis in Japan overtook financial markets around the globe Tuesday, pushing stocks and other investments lower. The Japanese stock market lost 10 percent of its value, and Wall Street dropped steeply before bouncing back.
How to Invest
The current bull market in U.S. stocks celebrated its second birthday on March 9.
With human beings, a 2-year-old is a lusty toddler with a lot more growing to do. For a bull-market-run in stocks, however – particularly a bull market as vigorous as this one has been – the two-year mark is a good time to start searching for some serious signs of aging.
Don’t get me wrong: The U.S. bull market could continue – indeed, it probably will continue for some time to come.
But we are almost certainly much closer to its end than we are to its March 9, 2009 day of birth.
And that reality means that we need to invest in a certain way.