When interest rates began dropping about 15 years ago, Grandma became dismayed over the puny interest rates she was offered on CDs. She depended upon interest income to live comfortably and needed to earn more than three percent on her money. So she asked me to suggest some safe stocks she could buy that paid juicy dividends.

Up to that point in time, I was totally focused on buying stocks for capital appreciation purposes only, but I agreed to help her. After thinking about her situation, I created the VectorVest Dividend Advisory. This service was designed to analyze, sort and rank stocks for dividend yield, safety and growth via the VectorVest Yield-Safety-Growth-Vector, YSG-Vector. When VectorVest ProGraphics was released in 1995, the VectorVest Dividend Advisory was included as part of the package. Unfortunately, this part of our service just doesn't get the attention it deserves.

You can make a lot of money on the stocks you own even if their prices don't go up. You just have to know how to do it. The first thing you need to do is pick good, dividend paying stocks. You can do this by accessing Stock Viewer and sorting by YSG-VECTOR, Desc. Note that as of Thursday night, Terra Nitrogen was the highest ranked stock. Wow, it's paying annual dividends at the rate of $14.52 per share with a yield of 12.08%. Great, but its Dividend Safety, DS, is only 45 on a scale of 0 to 99, and that's lower than I usually like to see. So what's next?

Cal-Maine Food, CALM. It's paying only $2.06 per share, but has a Dividend Yield, DY, of 5.10%. That's not bad and it has a DS of 87, which is very good. Now, how could you collect twice as much in dividend payments from this egg seller?

The easiest way to do this is to simply buy twice the number of shares. A lot of people don't know it, but they can double the number of shares they own by using a margin account. With a margin account, your broker will lend you the money to buy the additional shares of stock. Of course, he'll charge you interest on the loan, but that expense is tax deductable. Moreover, you don't have to buy the same stocks you already own. You can buy any stocks you wish. So why not buy stocks that pay higher dividend yields than the ones you already own? You might even be able to triple your dividend receipts. But hold on, there's more you can do to put those stocks to work for you.

Believe it or not, you can usually receive more money on a quarter-to-quarter basis by selling out-of-the money covered Calls than you can from receiving dividend payments. If you know how to trade options, try it. If you don't trade options, I'll try to explain this trade next week. If you buy dividend paying stocks on margin and sell out-of-the-money Covered Calls, you'll have a Cash Machine.

I met a lot of people at the recent Money Show in San Francisco who own stocks that are way down from their recent highs. Unfortunately, they did not take profits or protect their positions when the market rotated on the sharp 23% drop in crude oil prices. What could they have done to avoid this problem?

First of all, you can't fall in love with a stock and you can't worry about paying taxes on your gains. This means that you should always have an exit price in mind. VectorVest helps you in this regard with its Stop Prices. You can use them either as gospel or as a guide, but don't ignore them. Yes, I've heard every complaint imaginable about our Stop-Prices, stuff like they're too high, too low, too fast, too slow, so I challenge anyone to come up with a better one. See my essay of January 17, 2003.

If you were reluctant to sell a great stock, such as Potash Corp., POT, when it got an 'S' rating a month ago, what else could you have done to protect your profits? The answer lies in our Strategy of the Week, "Protecting Profits," which was first presented on March 31, 2000. It was presented again and again on the following dates: 06/08/01, 12/28/01, 02/27/04, 07/14/06, and 07/20/07. The 07/20/07 presentation is on the VectorVest University.

It's interesting to note that four of the eight techniques given in the Protecting Profits strategy involves the use of options. Remarkably, most of the people I talked to at the Money Show did not know how to trade options. That's too bad because they could have saved a lot of money with some simple option trades. Yes, the option trades I'm talking about are simple, but they aren't necessarily easy to understand. So you really need to know what you're doing when you trade options.

I learned how to trade options by reading, reading and reading. I must have read 30 books, all of them very boring, before I felt like I really knew what I was doing. And I took some very expensive courses, also very boring, before I felt comfortable making large options trades. After several years of trading, I felt that I had the knowledge and experience to write an options course that was as good as or better than any other course you'll find anywhere. The key to the VectorVest Options Course is that it takes nothing for granted. It starts with the basic definitions of stock options, the two types of options, Calls and Puts, and teaches over thirty option strategies from simple to complex, step-by-step. It's perfect for investors who want to learn how to trade options from the ground up.

Once you learn to trade stock options, you'll know how to keep the stocks you love and not lose money even if they go down. It's like having your cake and eating it too. When a good stock goes south, use options to Ease the Pain.

It's BOLD. BRASH. SLEEK. SOPHISTICATED. It's VectorVest RealTime...the only software that brings the power of VectorVest's indicators, tools and capabilities to a real-time platform. To see it now, click here: http://www.vectorvest.com/realtime/training/

Six weeks ago, on 07/03/08 to be exact, I announced that we had created two new Industry Groups: Market(ETFs-Long)and Market(ETFs-Short). The following week, 07/11/08, I wrote an essay called, "ETF Classifications," in which I described how we had classified all the ETFs into seven additional Industry Groups. While this move received considerable praise, I wasn't sure I was satisfied with the results. So now we have classified all 686 ETFs in our database into 36 Industry Groups, and I think it's marvelous.

To see what we have done, please click on Viewers on the Main Tool Bar. Click on Sector Viewer; then double click on ETFs. Shazam, a screen with all 36 ETF Industry classifications, sorted by RT Desc, appears before your eyes. You should see ETFs(Sector\Biotech) at the top of your screen and ETFs(Commdty\Futures) at the bottom. So Biotech is hot and Commodity Futures are not.

Double click on the Industry column header. Whalaa, the 36 Industry classifications are now sorted alphabetically from A to Z with ETFs(Commdty\Futures) at the top of the list and ETFs(Short) at the bottom. This allows you to find a specific class of ETFs in a jiffy. For example, if you want to play the currency markets, just double click on ETFs (Currency\Country). Like magic, WisdomTreeIndRp, ICN, appears at the top of your screen. So what currency are we dealing with here? Click on News at the top of your screen. Bingo, you're in Yahoo!Finance and you can see we're dealing with the Indian Rupee. Click on Profile for more details.

If you want to see what the world markets are doing, simply find the ETFs(Foreign\Country) Industry Group and double click on it. Presto, 42 country ETFs appear on the screen, sorted by VST Desc. Wow, only one country ETF, has a 'B' rating, the iShares MSCI Turkey Fund, TUR, and at the bottom of the list is the iShares MSCI Belgium Fund, EWZ, who is getting crushed with an RT of only 0.56. So stock markets around the world are getting pounded.

OK, please close the ETFs(Foreign\Country) and right click on the row labeled ETFs at the bottom of your "Industries in Sector" screen. In the pop up window which appears, please click on "View Stocks in Business Sector." Open sesame, all 686 ETFs now appear on your screen, ranked by VST Desc, with PwrShsDBGldSht, DZZ, at the top. Now click on Layout at the top of your screen. On the right hand side, scroll down the box until you find Industry. Click on Industry; then click on Move Up, and move Industry up as high as it will go. Click OK. Hocus pocus, now the Industry classifications appear right next to the Company and Symbol columns. Wow!

I can immediately see that the top ranked ETF is in the ETFs(Short) Industry Group. And I thought the market was going up! Yes, it is, but large parts of it are going down. Fifteen of the top twenty-three ETFs, ranked by VST Desc., are in the ETFs(Short) Industry Group. You must remember that these stocks represent Contra Funds and they go up when the price of the asset they represent goes down. Sure enough, DZZ, is designed to reflect the inverse performance of a gold index and the price of gold has been falling like a lead balloon. DZZ is a hot stock right now, but keep your eye on it. It won't be that way forever.

Note that the fifth stock from the top is Healthshrs Emrg, HHJ. I can see that it's in the ETFs(Specialty\Disease) group, but what does Emrg, have to do with a disease? Click on Analysis at the top of the screen. The Business description says that the Fund's objective is to track the performance of the HealthShares Emerging Cancer Index, which includes biotechnology companies that have been identified as "emerging cancer" companies. OK, I've got it. Please close the Stock Analysis window.

Double click on the Company column header. Abrakadabra, all the ETFs are sorted alphabetically from A to Z. Isn't that great? Now, I can quickly see the entire array of ETFs by name, symbol and classification. Now I quickly know what I'm looking at without going to a lot of trouble. It's like magic, ETF Magic.

P.S. If you layout your Viewer as suggested above, you will also see the Industry Groups on all your other screens. I like that.