Bear Markets Make me Sad...

I'm a very bullish investor. To me, bearish days should be few and far between. That's probably because I'm not a short term investor. And in the long term, little day to day things shouldn't swing your portfoilo hideously.

In the past month, we've seen it all. Record oil prices, soaring home sales, inflation fears. You name it, I've heard it. The Nasdaq and DJIA have both lost around 2.0% in value. So what's the remedy to make money during the bearish times?

DIVIDENDS

Look for companies that raise their payouts consecutively. Look for companies that have solid cash flows. Here's the list of companies I invest in that has pretty nice dividend yields.

NZT New Zealand Telecom 6.59%
WM Washington Mutual 4.58%
MO Altria Group 4.17%
PTR PetroChina 3.88%
ACH Aluminum Corp of China 3.75%
SPG Simon Property Group 3.62%
KO Coca Cola 2.56%
CHL China Mobile 2.51%
GE General Electric 2.50%
XOM ExxonMobil 1.98%
CAT Catepillar 1.82%
CQB Chiquita Brands 1.57%
MSFT Microsoft 1.18%
MOT Motorola 0.76%
WFMI Whole Foods Market 0.76%
WAG Walgreens 0.48%
LUV Southwest Airlines 0.13%

I use Scottrade for most of my trading. Their $7 commissions are nice, but their downfall is not being able to reinvest your dividends. Schwab does though. I love the idea of reinvesting dividends. Your stake in the company just keeps growing. But taking the cash and saving it is also a good idea too. I hope you can see that with this arsenol of dividend paying stocks, I can worry a little less about market downturns.

Sorry I haven't written in awhile. I just moved. :)