STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 13 January 2012

[tclambert]

93. New Zealand Telecom had nice dividends for awhile.

Yahoo says they are paying 13.3% now. In June, 2010 I bought some because it was paying around 10%. The share price went up 25% by December and I couldn't resist cashing that in. There was also a foreign tax involved, so the effective yield was lower. I kinda traded it for AT&T stock. At that time the yields made that a decent looking exchange.

They increased the dividend since and the price recently dropped quite a bit. Something must have happened in November.

For now, I like the yield on Windstream (WIN) and Centurylink (CTL), both large cap telecoms with yields a little higher than AT&T, but more volatile stock prices. AT&T, with a market cap of $178B, seems about as safe to me as a savings account in a bank. The FDIC makes the bank account a hair safer. But the interest rate on savings accounts now is essentially 0%.