With the heightened interest in Retirement Strategies and the PayDay Portfolio there has been an increasing demand for easy access to dividend information, i.e., execution dates and dividend payment dates. This information is now available in VectorVest 7.

(You may read this essay and use it as a tutorial or you may wish to view this week's "Strategy of the Week" presentation to see all that is written below.)

Assuming you have opened VectorVest 7, you may access information on dividend dates via the Viewers tab at the top of your screen or the Tools Menu in the upper right hand corner of your screen. For example: Click on the Viewers tab; then click on Dividends Viewer. The display will show day-by-day lists in chronological order of all the stocks which have reported upcoming dividend execution dates and/or dividend payment dates.

Note that you may access this information on any stock listed in Stock Viewer by highlighting the stock(s) of your choice, right clicking on a highlighted stock, clicking on Upcoming Dividend Dates and the available information will appear on your screen. It is important to note that of the 3,400 dividend paying stocks in our database, only about 1,000 have announced dividend execution and/or dividend payment dates at this time. So it is necessary to check this information on a regular basis to stay fully informed.

Once you have accessed Dividends Viewer, via Stock Viewer or the Tools Menu, you may see the dividend dates for selected stocks by clicking on the Drop Down Arrow next to the box saying, "View All Stocks," selecting "Filter by Stocks," entering the ticker symbols in the box saying, "Find Symbol(s)," setting the time period for your search, then hitting the Enter key. If you click on either the highlighted "Dividend Ex Dates" or the "Dividend Pay Dates" key, it will be de-activated, and only the other dates will be displayed.

Finally, you may also use the Dividends Viewer in a UniSearch search. For example, you may access UniSearch, select Strategies-Retirement, select "High VST+YSG Stocks," click an empty box in the Parameter column, click on Stocks, click on Dividend Analysis, click on Dividend-(Ex Date), click on an empty box in the Operator column, click on <=, click on an empty box in the Value column, select 90 Days out, set the time and date of your search, and click on Run Search. As of 3:46 PM today, the search returned data on 42 stocks along with the available Dividend Dates.

HI HO SILVER.
Even though I have a first class filtering system, a lot of crazy, useless stuff comes into my email box. It gets deleted in the blink of an eye. But it doesn't take long to see that a lot of folks have been pounding the table on silver. And it doesn't take long to see that the price of silver has gone wild. How high can it go? Who knows? But that doesn't mean you can't ride that horse. All you need to know is When to Buy and When to Sell. We've done quite well with our Midas Touch on gold. Why not try a similar technique on silver?

So join Mr. James Penna, Senior Consultant and Instructor, at the VectorVest University to see an absolutely great "Strategy of the Week" presentation: "Hi Ho Silver."

On October 2, 2009, I wrote an essay called "Double Juicy." It was part of the "Retirement" series of essays in which I described how I would go about generating $50,000 of income per year from $500,000 in financial assets. This essay described a strategy which finds optionable stocks paying dividends of at least $2.00 a year and yield at least 4%. It was called, "Optionable 2x4s." That evening, Mr. Glenn Tompkins, Manager of Educational Services, illustrated how the "Optionable 2x4s" Strategy could be used with the Option Rate of Return Tool to capture both the juicy dividend payments and the juicier option premiums.

Even though Mr. Tompkins made the implementation of this strategy look easy, I was concerned that the requirement of selling Covered Call Options to generate income was adding too much complexity for most of our subscribers. So I wrote another essay the following week called, "Managing Your Retirement Stocks." It also became clear to me that selling Covered Calls must be a vital and necessary part of any retirement strategy. I consider the gains that one makes in Capital Appreciation as cushion, but dividend payments alone cannot provide sufficient income to meet our goal of a 10% annual return. Therefore, I thought long and hard on defining a simple, no guess-work, mechanical technique of consistently generating substantial income from the "Double Juicy" concept. I believe I finally designed a rules-based system that will work.

This system is based upon the idea of receiving a nice cash payment at least once a week. When I was a kid I used to get paid in cash at the end of each week, and I found that no matter how rotten the week was, the cash payment always made me feel better. I have never gotten the same feeling from receiving a check in the mail and having my pay deposited directly into a checking account is for the birds. Nevertheless, we live in an electronic world and I still like money. So I decided to take my electronic payments on Fridays.

From the studies that we have done so far, it appears that a $100,000 portfolio will deliver $20,000 to $30,000 per year in dividend and option premium payments with this system. These numbers do not include gains or losses in stock prices. As you can imagine, however, the money received in payments can mitigate any damage done to your capital position. Another thing I like about this system is that it doesn't require a lot of attention. You only have to look at your portfolio once a week.

We are planning on introducing this system as a Special Bonus to attendees at our One-Day Options Course in Los Angeles on June 12, 2010. So why are we not presenting it as a "Strategy of the Week" presentation? Because this material would normally be part of our Options Course and I want you to learn how to trade Options. If you have already taken our Options Course, we will ship a report to you after June 15, 2010 for only $29.00. Simply, call 1-888-658-7638, and ask for the report on The Payday Portfolio.

A SLICK PROPOSITION.
As a layman, I marvel at the technology used in deep sea oil drilling. As a former Chemical Engineer who designed and built plants, I'm repelled at the sloppy, reckless work that led to the BP Oil release taking place in the Gulf of Mexico. As an investor, betting against BP early on was an easy way to make money. But there were times when it looked like they might actually "plug the damn hole." If successful, it would have given BP's stock price a boost. If not successful, BP's stock price would continue to slide down the slippery slick. There's a trade for every situation and Mr. Dan Misch, another one of our best Instructors, will demonstrate how one could have made money when the outlook was dire and when it was hopeful, but not certain. Please join Dan at the VectorVest University to see this week's intriguing "Strategy of the Week" presentation, "A Slick Proposition."

With interest rates at historically low levels, more and more senior investors are adding dividend paying stocks to their retirement portfolios. This message has resonated throughout the financial services community and Barron's magazine has now entered the fray with a cover story on "10 Terrific Dividend Stocks."

My first reaction to any article such as this is to ask, "What would VectorVest say about these stocks?" In this case, I was familiar with all ten of the stocks, CVX, INTC, JNJ, MCD, NVS, NSRGY, PEP, PG, STD and VZ cited in the article because they all represented large, well established companies. So I created a new WatchList Group called "Dividend Stocks." I put the 10 stocks into a WatchList called, "Barron's 10 Terrific Dividend Stocks." Oops, Nestle, a pink sheet ADR, was not found in our database and was not added to the WatchList. (We are seeing if we can get the data required to add it.)

Nevertheless, the WatchList showed that on 11/20/09, seven of the 9 stocks were rated "B" and two "H." The average RV and RS of the 9 stocks were above 1.00, and that is good. The average Forecasted Earnings Growth Rate, GRT, was -1, and that is not good. The average Dividend Yield, DY, was an acceptable 3.50%, but the average Dividend Growth, DG, was only 3.00%/Yr. Overall, I thought this was an OK portfolio, but not too exciting.

Could VectorVest do better? To answer this question, I created five more WatchLists, one for each of the five Retirement Strategies we have created, and put them into the Dividend Stocks WatchList Group as well. Here's a summary of what I found as of 11/20/09:

Name...........	Avg$/Sh	AvgRV	AvgRS	AvgGRT	AvgEPS	AvgDiv	AvgDY	AvgDG
Barron's 10	49.63	1.24	1.16	-1.0	3.85	1.72	3.50	3.0
Blue Chip Bnzs	52.78	1.47	1.18	11.0	4.72	1.16	2.20	13.0
Don's Dandies	29.36	.32	1.02	6.0	2.32	0.93	3.20	6.0
Optionable 2x4s	32.98	1.59	0.95	19.0	4.13	3.36	10.20	12.0
High VST+YSG	50.93	1.57	1.41	19.0	2.98	0.54	1.10	16.0
High Yield	24.18	1.48	0.89	13.0	3.38	3.29	13.60	7.0

Life is a matter of trade-offs. If you want high performance, i.e., the WatchList with the highest RVs, RSs and GRTs, you get low yield. If you want high yield, you get low safety. All of the WatchLists created by VectorVest searches had higher average RVs, higher average GRTs and higher averages DGs than the stocks in the Barron's 10 Watchlist. Only two of the Vectorest WatchLists had higher average RSs, and only two V V WatchLists had higher DYs than the Barron's 10.

If I had to pick one strategy to run with, I'd pick the High VST+YSG strategy and trade Covered Calls to generate income. But you, dear reader, can pick and choose your stocks one by one. See if you can put together a 10 stock WatchList that is better, in all respects, than Barron's 10 Terrific Dividend Stocks.

CHERRY PICKING HIGH PERFORMANCE STOCKS.
The VectorVest RealTime Tote Board makes it incredibly easy to see which strategies have performed the best each day. But the real question is which strategies are most likely to perform the best tomorrow? We want to pass this information on to you because the best way to make big profits is to place your bets BEFORE the market opens. How can you do that? Mr. Jerry D'Ambrosio, Product Support Specialist and Instructor, will show us how. So visit the VectorVest University to see this week's terrific "Strategy of the Week" presentation: "Cherry Picking High Performance Stocks."

Since writing the essay "Retirement Strategy - Part I" on September 18, 2009, I have continued to receive a steady stream of emails from subscribers seeking a combination of safety, capital appreciation and current income. In this regard, I tested an old favorite strategy of mine, Vector + Vector.

Alas, I found that the RS requirement was too stringent to find enough stocks under current market conditions, so I lowered the RS requirement from 1.5 to 1.25. Indeed, this adjustment did allow the search to return more stocks, but the dividend yields were pretty skimpy. So I adjusted the search again to find only optionable stocks, thinking that I could generate current income by selling Covered Calls. I named the new strategy "High VST + YSG Stocks," and put it into a new strategy group in the UniSearch Tool called Strategies - Retirement.

The following week, September 25, 2009, I created another search which was designed to find reasonably safe stocks with high dividend yields. I called it "High Yield 2x10s" and put it into the Strategies - Retirement Group in UniSearch. The top 10 stocks found by this search on September 25, 2009 had an average dividend yield of 13.64%.

On October 2, 2009, I created a third search, called "Optionable 2x4s," which aimed to find optionable stocks paying dividends of at least $2.00 per share and yielding at least 4%. This search was also placed into the Strategies - Retirement folder in UniSearch.

Finally, on October 9, 2009, I wrote an essay called, "Managing Your Retirement Stocks," which explained and illustrated how one might go about capturing both the dividend and the option premium. Although I thought I had written all that I needed to on the subject, the e-mails kept coming in, especially in regard to bond funds. So I wrote an essay on October 16, 2009 called, "Relatively Safe Bond Funds Paying 6%."

But the emails keep coming in. So what else can I do? How about trying to combine some of our bottom fishing ideas along with capturing high dividend yields? How could we do this? Well let's find some of the biggest, safest stocks that have been beaten down in price and still pay juicy dividends. Hmm, our Blue Chip Bargains strategies find the biggest, safest stocks and they're nearly all optionable. But how can we find those with the highest dividend yields?

Simple. Just sort by DY Desc.

Hey, that works pretty well, but where does the bottom fishing part come into play? Well dividend yields go up when prices go down, so if you sort by DY Desc., you automatically find stocks that have gone down in price. It's a technique used by many money managers. Yes, but what about the quality of the dividends? Are they safe? Well let's sort by YSG Desc. Hey, that works even better, but I still want to do a little better job of bottom fishing. How should I do that? Try sorting by the YSG/CI Desc. That ought to do it.

Wow! I don't believe what I'm looking at - a 95.47% gain since March 10, 2009 with 100% winners and a 5.17% dividend yield. I think I've found a Retirement - Strategies - Blue Chip Bonanzas.

Blue Chip Bonanzas.
If you're interested in building a portfolio that has it all: safety, capital appreciation, above average dividend yields with optionable stocks and low portfolio turnover, join Mr. Steve Chappell, Director of Educational Services, at the VectorVest University to see this week's wonderful "Strategy of the Week" presentation: "Blue Chip Bonanzas."