My investment style has always been to invest in rock solid companies. The bell weather companies. Tech is my favorite place to play but I also look at the great companies in materials or basic goods. Companies like 3M or Proctor & Gamble, Intel, IBM, Oracle. I have played the short side of stocks, options, and the long side, always protecting myself for the big down or the big up.

I have recently looked into trading the dividend plays. I never thought to much about it but after I looked closer, it made sense to me. Now I know that when you trade options, you have no real part o the company and therefor you dont get any perks, like dividends. You just play the stock as it is, no frills. When you own a stock out right, you are givin a dividend for each share you own. That can be as little as.05 a share or upwards of 4.00 or 5.00 dollars a share. I did some research on dividend trading and found out that you can hold a share of stock and collect the dividend, not by holding it for a long period of time but just long enough. Let me explain.

Say this company pays a dividend of.50 a share, and the ex. date (the date that you have to be on record of holding the stock) is Dec. 25. I can buy this stock on say, the 18th of Dec. I buy it a week or so in advance just because I don’t want any problems with the trade finallyzing. So come the 25th of Dec. I own the stock. The dividend is payed to those who are on record, which is me. I then turn around and sell the stock say on the 29th, again, I don’t want there to be any problems with me being on record about holding the stock on the ex. date.Say I had 500 shares of XYZ company, the company payed a.25 a share, I was on record so I get the.25 a share, even though I sold it on the 29th.

All in all, I made 125.00 on the dividend payout. Now if the stock went up, I really made out good. If it went down, we hope it didn’t go down to where I lose money. This is food for thought… Peace.