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."

Two weeks ago I began writing about designing a $500,000 retirement strategy for people in IRAs or 401Ks that would produce $50,000 per year of current income while maintaining the principal. I said that I would put $200,000 into relatively safe bond funds that were paying about 6% interest and then create three $100,000 stock portfolios with the remaining $300,000.

I used a variation of the Vector + Vector Strategy to create the first $100,000 portfolio and named it, "High VST+YSG Stocks." Last week I created a Strategy called, "High Yield 2x10s," which finds stocks that pay at least a $2.00 per share dividend and Yield at least 10%. You may find both of these Strategies in the UniSearch Tool located in the Strategy Group called, "Strategies - Retirement."

So far I'm positioned to earn $12,000 per year of current income from my $200,000 investment in a relatively safe bond Fund, and I believe I can make $15,000 per year from a $100,000 portfolio of High VST+YSG stocks by selling Covered Calls. I hope to also make at least $11,500 per year from a $100,000 portfolio of High Yield 2x10s stocks. So now I need to find a way to make at least $11,500 per year from the final $100,000 that I have to invest.

I believe the surest way of doing this is by selling Covered Calls on high yield stocks. Basically, I'm going to combine the techniques I plan to use in managing the two $100,000 portfolios described above to produce this income. So I created a third strategy which a call "Optionable 2x4s." This strategy finds optionable stocks that pay at least a $2.00 per year dividend and Yield at least 4%. It is sorted by VST+YSG Desc., but that doesn't really matter because of the way I'm going to use this portfolio.

What I'm going to do, is use the Option Rate of Return Tool found in Unisearch to find stocks with juicy dividend payments and juicy option premiums. Moreover, I'm only going to trade stocks with the highest rates of return. For example, I clicked on Research on the Main Tool Bar, clicked on Option Rate of Return in the Drop Down Window, adjusted the settings to the Nov Expiration Date, 1 Strike Out of the Money, selected my new strategy, "Optionable 2x4s," clicked on the Run Search button as of 10/01/09, and sorted the results by Option ARR.

Macerich, MAC, came to the top of the list with an Option ARR of 54.39% and a $2.12 per share Option Price. So I highlighted the stock and clicked on View Stock News. This took me right to Yahoo!Finance where I was able to click on Options. It defaulted to October data, so I clicked on Nov 09 and saw immediately that the $30.00 strike Call options were trading between 1.90 and 2.10 per share, which was close to what I got from VectorVest.

I then clicked on Key Statistics and scrolled down to the lower right hand corner of the data sheet and saw that the most recent dividend payment was made on September 20th. I had just missed the most recent dividend payment. So I repeated this process on the next stock, which was BRE. Once again, I just missed the dividend payment. Actually, I should be looking at the Ex-dividend date because I would have to own the stock on or before that date in order to be eligible to receive the dividend.

Unfortunately, all the stocks I was interested in had recently paid their dividends. But that doesn't discourage me. Once I get into the rhythm of trading these stocks at the right times, it will start working out just fine. Incidentally, the only stocks that I'm interested in trading with this strategy are those showing an Options ARR of 25% or more with an option premium of $2.00 per share or more.

Now that I have completed the plan for investing the $500,000, there's a whole lot I need to say about implementation. I will cover the subject in some detail next week, but I will say this. My first caution to you is to stay on the right side of the market. There's a real danger of forgetting to properly manage your stocks when you're focused on capturing dividends and option premiums. I've made this mistake myself and I can tell you that the profits you'll make from dividends and option premiums, no matter how juicy, can easily be outweighed by the money you'll lose on a stock that's heading south. This is especially true when you're going after the Double Juicy.

CHERRY PICKING STOCKS FOR JUICY CURRENT INCOME.
Last week we learned how to generate extra income from dividend paying stocks. This week we are going to take that technique to a new level. Mr. Glenn Tompkins, Manager of Internal Training, will show us how to not only find stocks with juicy dividend payments, but cherry pick those with the juiciest option premiums. It makes my mouth water just thinking about it. So join Mr. Glenn at the VectorVest University to see this week's "Strategy of the Week" presentation: "Cherry Picking Stocks for Juicy Current Income."

Last week I introduced the subject of generating cash from your stock portfolio. Not only is that a worthy goal, but I've read that dividend paying stocks outperform the market by 1% to 1.5% per month during downturns. This sounds reasonable to me. Why would someone sell their dividend paying stocks if they could make 20% to 30% a year even in a bear market?

Let's see how this might be done. First of all, we need to find an acceptable dividend paying stock. We can do this by simply accessing Stock Viewer and sorting by YSG Desc. As of yesterday, Thursday, 09/04/08, Cal-Maine Food, CALM, was in the top spot. Although it now has an "S" rating and I wouldn't buy it at this time, I want to keep my eye on it because it's making a ton of money and has an excellent Dividend Safety, DS, rating of 87. So let's use it as an example.

CALM closed yesterday at $34.50 per share and is paying cash dividends at the rate of $2.06 for a yield of 5.97%. If I were to buy these shares on margin, the effective DY would be twice as high, i.e., 11.94%. Of course I would have to pay interest to my broker on the borrowed funds, but the interest expense is tax deductable. Although I'm already looking at a juicy return, how could I get more? I'd sell some out-of-the-money Covered Calls. Yahoo!Finance shows that CALM had its last ex-dividend date on July 28, 2008, so I'd assume that its next declaration will be made in late October. Therefore, I'd be selling the November 40 Covered Calls, which are currently trading at $1.75 per share.

Here's how this trade would work: I would buy 100 shares of CALM on margin for about $1,725.00, not counting commissions or interest and I would sell one CALM November 40 Call Option @ $1.75 per share. My account would be charged $1,725.00 for buying the stock and be credited $175.00 for selling the option. The net charge would $1,550.00 not counting commissions or interest. Around the middle of November, my account would receive a dividend credit of about $51.50. The total income from the sale of the Call Option and receipt of the dividend payment would be about $226.50. This would give me a quarterly return of 13.1%. If I could do this four times a year, my annualized rate of return would be 52.5%, not counting commissions and interest.

This sounds great, but there are several other things that can happen to this trade. For example, the stock's price could rise prior to the ex-dividend date and the stock could be called at $40.00 per share. Although I wouldn't get the $51.50 dividend payment, I'd make about $500 on the stock and get to keep the $175 option credit too. This is not a bad deal.

If, on the other hand, the stock's price fell, I'd have to make some decisions. I could hang on to the stock, collect the dividend and option premium, and repeat the process again the next quarter. But that's no fun. I usually buy back the Call Option at a much lower price than I sold it for; then get more income by selling another Call Option at a lower Strike Price. This technique invokes the risk of getting called out of your stock at a price lower than your purchase price, so I suggest that you practice it with only small amounts of money before using it with serious money.

Incidentally, did you know that most of the market's historical gains have come from dividends? Maybe you've heard that selling covered Calls was the most frequently used option trade. Both generate income. Put them together and you have the Cash Machine, Part II.

P.S. Terra Nitrogen, TNH, closed up $8.51 today and is up over $14.00 since I mentioned it last week.