The Traderszone Network

From Bryce Coward, CFA: From time to time we illustrate our analysis of highly innovative companies in a Knowledge Leader spotlight. Today we look at Microchip Technology Inc. (MCHP), a highly innovative semiconductor manufacturer that produces programmable microcontroller products used in autos, computing and lighting, among many other applications.

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The acquisition of Alpha Exchange by Visible Alpha creates an end-to-end solution for research discovery, consumption, tracking, evaluation, payment and collaboration.

Sometimes, dividend investors' focus on stocks with meaningful dividend yields can distract them from promising under-the-radar opportunities for income growth. Case in point: Both Visa (NYSE: V) and Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU) have relatively unimpressive dividend yields, but their dividend growth potential is excellent.

Here's a closer look at each of these dividend stocks, and why income investors may want to consider putting both of these companies on their watch lists.

Image source: Getty Images.

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Wall Street says you have to settle for the pathetic 2% yields most folks scrape by on from 10-year Treasuries, or your typical S&P 500 stock.

Don’t believe them.

Because there’s a far better way to bankroll your retirement that they won’t tell you about: municipal bonds.

While their name sounds boring, that’s the last word I’d use to describe the income they throw off: “munis” pay dividend yields of 5% and often much more, thanks to a unique tax advantage.

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Wall Street says you have to settle for the pathetic 2% yields most folks scrape by on from 10-year Treasuries, or your typical S&P 500 stock.

Don’t believe them.

Because there’s a far better way to bankroll your retirement that they won’t tell you about: municipal bonds.

While their name sounds boring, that’s the last word I’d use to describe the income they throw off: “munis” pay dividend yields of 5% and often much more, thanks to a unique tax advantage.

read more

Union Square Ventures partner Albert Wenger has said he will fund a prize aimed to incentivize the creation of blockchain-powered blogging platform.

Options Profit Calculator provides a unique way to view the returns and profit/loss of stock options strategies.

CEFData.com is the premium web-based extension of CEF Advisors’ CEF Universe project. We currently collect and produce 216 data points for US listed traditional closed-end funds and 142 data points for Business Development Companies (BDCs). Our current offering is weekly XLS and PDF files with our expansive data coverage for the universe of funds and a Daily CEF/BDC News and SEC Filings Alert service.

The Closed-End Fund Association (CEFA) is the national trade association representing the closed-end fund industry. A not-for-profit association, CEFA is committed to educating investors about the many benefits of these unique investment products and to providing a resource for information about its members and their offerings.

Japan’s Nikkei jumped 5.7% after its worst two-day performance since 1987. However, investor sentiment in the region remains uncertain, given the ongoing crisis at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Other indexes also showed gains. The Shanghai Composite added 1.2%, South Korea’s Kospi gained 1.8%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng had a 0.1% rise. European stocks have had modest declines. Traders have taken cues from a downgrade of Portugal’s debt, with Moody’s slashing its rating by two degrees to “A3.” Spain’s IBEX 35 was off 1.2%, the French CAC 40 shed 0.8%, London’s FTSE 100 was down 0.7%, and the German DAX was fractionally higher. [Read more →]

Over the last few years the world has changed dramatically for traders. New places to trade, much cheaper prices, combined with a wide range of uniquely focused (some might say, exotic) product offerings have consistently expanded profit opportunities for traders of all experience levels.

And despite the upheaval caused to some in the industry over the past dozen or so years (in particular, the old-school brokers), these changes seem to have been extremely beneficial to the markets at large. No question, digital technology has helped make trading much simpler and more accessible for both individuals and larger entities alike.

As evidence, look to the array of Internet brokers that offer round-the-clock, browser-based order fills. An online smorgasbord of underlying instruments that, up until just a few years ago was only accessible to the most sophisticated managers, is now available to most traders. And real-time market-data providers now offer timely and consistent updates from around the globe. Add to this the fact that hundreds (possibly thousands) of developers and software publishers have sprung up in recent years to create programs that help traders crunch all of this data together in hopes of making huge profits. [Read more →]

After breaking away from Twitter awhile back, the investing site StockTwits is rolling out a number of new features that it hopes will draw in more traders. The site, still in beta and billed as a real time platform for stock traders to share information, has a desktop AIR application that includes video, news and charts.

Following the acquisition of Chart.ly last year, StockTwits acquired the small but influential financial news site Abnormal Returns in January of 2010. AR features curated news as well as original content about the financial markets and stocks. StockTwits is reportedly taking that platform and adding its real time news and information feed from the StockTwits network.

The company has raised $4.6 million over three rounds of funding and was originally built on top of the Twitter platform. In late 2009 they launched a desktop version of the product and moved to their own messaging platform. In addition to contributing trading strategies via blog posts and video, some of the things StockTwits users will be able to do on the new site are watching suggested user streams, perusing charts shared by other users, checking out specific filtered ticker pages and watching the 24-hour StockTwits TV stream.

Related articles by Zemanta

• StockTwits Evolves, Becomes Must Use Site For Traders (techcrunch.com)
• Abnormal Returns gets even better (blogs.reuters.com)
• StockTwits Buys Financial Blog Abnormal Returns (paidcontent.org)
• With Its Desktop App, StockTwits Grows Up…And Away From Twitter (techcrunch.com)
• Blogonomics: Monetize via acquisition (blogs.reuters.com)