Our ranking of the top-performing funds

May 17, 2014

BARRON'S TOP HEDGE FUNDS reflected a number of marketplace shifts last year. As we predicted in early 2013, investors in asset-backeds and mortgage-backeds have seen a slowing of returns over the past year, ending a remarkable run. Our 100 best funds, many of them equity-related, returned an annualized 17.01%, net of fees, over three years, beating the BarclayHedge Index Average by a comfortable 13 percentage points and the Standard & Poor's 500 by a point. Leading the way was Glenview Offshore Opportunity, up 32.61% per year over three years, and distressed investor Hildene Opportunities, up 30.64%.

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By Rachel Fox: FoxOnStocks.com @FoxOnStocks

Hockey Stocks to Invest in

Over the weekend, I was clicking around Forbes dot com, checking out what is going on in the market and ran across an excellent article by Richard Lehmann, called “How to Get Income Without Growth.” It was uplifting and solid and Mr. Lehmann gave excellent specific recommendations of Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) and closed-end funds, including Williams Partners, Northern Tier Energy, and Blackrock Utility.

I was going to go deep on this subject and research MLPs – yet another new-to-me investing acronym – but then my attention was stolen by this ….

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By Rachel Fox - Fox on Stocks

April 14, 2014 6:35 am

That haunting phrase… “History repeats itself” can often leave a haunting feeling in the pit of ones stomach. Thinking about the stock market’s past crashes can allow fear to seep into the psyche of traders… But fear and doubt are the LAST things us traders want on our minds. Whenever I hear about history repeating itself, my mind goes to the stock market. No doubt any traders who were trading back in 2000 and in 2008 remember the dreadful crashes that happened in the market. Whatever you do, don’t let past market problems get to your mind. See past problems...

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Dividend Champions with low payout ratios and small debt figures originally published at long-term-investments.blogspot.com. Dividend Champions are stocks with a very long history of consecutive dividend hikes. They have achieved to boost dividends year over year for more than 25 years without an interruption.

Only 105 stocks have managed this very important goal for long-term dividend growth investors. I like those stocks but some of them have a really high payout ratio.

Earlier, I talked about the importance of the dividend growth rate and that it is better to buy low yielding stocks with a much higher growth rate than stocks with very big yields. Two main criteria for future dividend growth are the debt ratios and dividend payout figures.