Festival of Stocks, April 25, 2011

Welcome to the April 25, 2011 edition of the Festival of Stocks. The Festival of Stocks is a blog carnival dedicated to highlighting bloggers best posts on stock market related topics.Fat Pitch Financials is the actual birth place of this online weekly event, so it is always a special occasion when I get the chance to host this roving event.

If you aren’t already familiar with my blog, Fat Pitch Financials, it is a value investing blog with a focus on wide moat companies selling at substantial discounts and Benjamin Graham style workouts. I encourage you to subscribe for free to my blog feed to keep up with my latest postings.

You should also check my Fat Pitch Financials Contributor’s Corner while you are here. It is my premium members only community dedicated to unique arbitrage and special situation opportunities.

Now that you are familiar with Fat Pitch Financials, let’s take a look at this week’s Festival of Stock participants. Here are this week’s entries:

Top Visited Stories at Value Investing News:

1. Benjamin Graham’s Accountant
2. Review of Joel Greenblatt’s “The Big Secret for the Small Investor”
3. Valuation-Informed Indexing #38: Stock Prices Are Not a Random Walk — Here’s More Proof!
4. Nassim Taleb’s First Interview Since The Earthquake in Japan
5. Industry ROIC

Tom Drake presents How Stock Options Work? posted at Canadian Finance Blog, saying, “Employee stock options give you the right to buy a specific number of shares of your company’s stock at a time and price specified by your employer.”

Hussein Sumar presents S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats of 2011 posted at Best Dividend Stocks, saying, “The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Index is the most honorable list of dividend paying stocks as measured by the S&P 500 Index that have consistently increased their dividends for the past 25 years, without missing a single dividend payment.”

Dividends4Life presents ConocoPhillips (COP) Dividend Stock Analysis posted at Dividend Growth Stocks, saying, “ConocoPhillips Co. was formed in 2002 when Phillips Petroleum and Conoco merged and is now is the fourth largest integrated oil company in the world. Linked here is a detailed analysis and commentary.”

Kevin presents Adam’s Golf: A Balanced Micro Cap Golf Stock posted at Invest It Wisely, saying, “Adam’s Golf (ADGF) is the micro-cap of all micro capitalization stocks—you could buy the company outright for just over $42 million dollars. But while its small size may be threatening to some, it is important to remember that sometimes the biggest earners come in the smallest of stocks. This stock, I believe, is one such stock.”

Intelligent Speculator presents Closing Trade: Long WebMD (WMBD) & Short The Knot (KNOT) posted at Intelligent Speculator, saying, “A few trades we would recommend.”

Dividend Growth Investor presents Nestle (NSRGY) Dividend Stock Analysis posted at Dividend Growth Investor, saying, “Nestle S.A. (NSRGY) provides nutrition, health, and wellness products worldwide. The company is a member of the international dividend achievers index, as it has managed to increase dividends every year since 1996. In addition to that, Nestle recently sold its majority stake in Alcon (ACL), which has enabled it to pursue a massive stock buyback strategy.”

Billy Hart presents Investing Basics – What Are Stocks posted at inMessment – Life Investments | Stocks | ETFs | Money, saying, “This post gives a high-level view of what Stock are. Understanding the different ways to invest goes a long way to build your confidence when investing in the stock market. There are nearly as many different options as there are people ready to give their opinion of which one is best.”

Alexander presents Dividend Stock Investing: Going Foreign posted at Dividend Stocks, saying, “Many investors fail to think of foreign stocks as they formulate an investing plan.”

Jim Yih presents Should I Sell in a bear market? posted at Retire Happy Blog, saying, “Many investors may be questioning the advice given by experts, the media and financial advisors. We are in a tough environment and many have blamed this recent downturn on sentiment, emotions and lack of confidence.”

Philip presents Best Way to Save for Retirement Once You Max Out Your Roth IRA posted at PT Money: Personal Finance.

Tom presents Asset Allocation: Protection from Bear Markets posted at StupidCents, saying, “What is asset allocation? It’s the mixture and distribution of different asset classes – typically stocks, bonds, and cash – in a portfolio.”

That concludes this edition of the Festival of Stocks. Be sure an leave comments as you visit each of the blogs that participated in this week’s Festival of Stocks. They’ll appreciate knowing folks are reading their articles.

If you are interested in volunteering to host a future edition of the Festival of Stocks, just contact me right away with the name of your site, blog URL, email address, and the date your prefer to host. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Festival of Stocks using our carnival submission form. If you have any trouble with the prior carnival submission form, you can use the BC Workaround Submitter instead. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our Festival of Stocks index page for those of you interested in reviewing the archives.