user: News: Investors continue to seek out dividend income from common stocks even as the uncertainty about future dividend tax rates weighs on people's minds. The 15% maximum rate for qualified dividends is set to expire at the end of this year unless Congress and the president act. However, the environment of low interest rates coupled with the relative stability of high-yield stocks during market downturns keep dividend-paying stocks on investor's shopping lists.

The First Cut seeks out domestic, exchange-listed stocks that have consistently raised their annual dividend payment over the last seven years while maintaining positive free cash flow over each of the last seven years. Financial stocks were excluded because their financial statements are not comparable with firms in other industries.

Cash flow is fundamentally different from earnings. Earnings are determined using principles of accrual accounting, while cash flow measures the direct consumption and generation of cash. The First Cut screens for positive free cash flow, which is calculated by examining cash flow from operations (a measure of a firm's ability to generate cash from day-to-day operations) and then subtracting capital expenditures and dividend payments. Free cash flow is considered to be excess cash flow that a company can use as it deems most beneficial. Strong free cash flow provides financial flexibility to increase dividends, develop new products or services, enter new markets, pay off debt, or buy shares back.

The ten stocks with the highest dividend yield (annual dividend payment divided by price) and with a current dividend yield above their average yield of the last three years made the First Cut. The historical growth rates and the consensus earnings growth rate estimate measure past and expected company performance. The 52-week price change highlights recent stock market performance. Click here to check out the Top 10 Cash Flow Kings With Rising Dividends.

John Bajkowski is president of AAII. Excerpted from November issue of AAII Journal.

Title: Cash Flow Kings With Rising Dividends


News: updated 04/15/2015 AT 08:30 PM EDT

•originally published 04/15/2015 AT 03:55 PM EDT

are jam-packed with all kinds of warp-speed pickers 'n' grinners. And as anyone who's seen anyone play guitar ever can attest, guitar players tend to make some pretty great faces while they're working.

So we'd like to present this informal guide to what the various stars of the ACM Awards may be telling you with their guitar faces. Although this is an art, not a science, we'd like to also note that we're the best at it, and our interpretations are less subjective entertainment than hard, inarguable fact.

We've seen this face before, and it was always on the face of someone losing a wizard-ing duel. Time to break out

if you want to pull this one out from behind, Zac.

Frederick M. Brown / Getty

Keith just heard that Simon Cowell referred to him as "Crocodile Dundee" and is putting that pain into his guitar solo. Doesn't make it hurt any less, though.

Did you know that every Brad Paisley guitar solo must continue until Brad Paisley has counted the number of unnecessary buttons on his current shirt not once, not twice, but

times? Only then can Brad Paisley rest. True facts.

"Listen, junior, I've got guitars with strings on 'em older than you. I'll make whatsoever damn face I please while I play. And you'll like it."

Title: Guitar Faces : People.com


News: The head of the largest U.S. labor union federation tried to pre-empt Donald Trump’s planned speech on trade on Tuesday, saying the Republican presidential candidate was full of “empty promises” as he tried to make inroads with working-class voters.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka – a top ally of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton – said at a trade conference in Washington that, at Trump campaign stops in the Rust Belt states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, voters should expect to hear “crocodile tears about lost jobs and shuttered factories.”

“Trump embodies everything that is wrong with our current trade policy. He has consistently sent American jobs overseas to line his own pockets,” Trumka said, apparently referring to Trump-branded products such as suits and ties that are made abroad.

Trumka’s rebuke occurred just hours before the New York businessman made a speech attacking Clinton’s record on trade, followed by a stop in Ohio.

Watch: What a Trump Presidency Would Mean for Investments

In a prepared speech delivered in a former steel town in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump denounced the “financial elite” and the “failed trade policies.” He said he’d reject proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. “Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy … but it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache,” Trump said.

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Both Clinton and Trump are battling over blue-collar voters ahead of the Nov. 8 election in states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio, which Democratic President Barack Obama won twice but which have been hard-hit by manufacturing job losses. Trumka has acknowledged that Trump’s populist rhetoric could appeal to Rust Belt workers.

Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, struggled with these voters in her primary race against U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who criticized her for supporting trade deals and said she was too close to Wall Street.

But when the AFL-CIO, a federation of 56 unions that collectively represent more than 12 million workers, formally endorsed Clinton for president earlier this month, Trumka warned of the “dire consequences” posed by Trump’s candidacy.

Trumka acknowledged on Tuesday that Clinton was pushed to reject the pending 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership during her primary campaign after pressure from progressives within her party, including Sanders, who now says he will vote for Clinton in November although he has not withdrawn from the race.

Fortune staff contributed to this report.

Title:

assistant: Top U.S. Labor Leader Blasts Donald Trump in Dueling Speeches