Best Dow Dividend Companies To Buy For 2015

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There's no doubt that Apple is at the center of technology's largest revolution ever, and that longtime shareholders have been handsomely rewarded with over 1,000% gains. However, there is a debate raging as to whether Apple remains a buy. The Motley Fool's senior technology analyst and managing bureau chief, Eric Bleeker, is prepared to fill you in on reasons to buy and reasons to sell Apple, and what opportunities are left for the company (and your portfolio) going forward. To get instant access to his latest thinking on Apple, simply click here now.

Top 5 Medical Companies For 2016: iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEF)

iShares Lehman 7-10 Year Treasury Bond Fund (the Fund) seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the intermediate-term sector of the United States Treasury market as defined by the Lehman Brothers 7-10 Year U.S. Treasury Index (the Index). The Index includes all publicly issued, United States Treasury securities that have a remaining maturity of between 7 and 10 years, are non-convertible, are denominated in United States dollars, are rated Baa3 by Moody�� Investors Service or BBB- by S&P, are fixed rate, and have more than $250 million par outstanding. Excluded from the Index are certain special issues, such as flower bonds, targeted investor notes (TINs), and state and local government bonds, and coupon issues that have been stripped from assets that are already included in the Index.

The Index is a market capitalization-weighted index. The Fund invests in a representative sample of the securities in the Index, which has a similar investment profile as the Index. The Fund�� investment advisor is Barclays Global Fund Advisor.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By John Maxfield]

  And finally, the yield on the 10-year Treasury has shot up -- meaning that the underlying bond prices have declined. Nearly a year ago, the benchmark security yielded less than 1.5%. Today, it's yielding more than 2.6%. It follows, then, that the prices of ETFs holding longer-duration Treasuries have responded in kind. Among others, the iShares Barclays 7-10 Year Treasury (NYSEMKT: IEF  ) is off by 6.9% since the beginning of May. And on the other side of the equation, funds that are short government bonds like the ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury (NYSEMKT: TBT  ) are in the midst of an impressive rally.

• [By Donald van Deventer]

  Long-duration Treasury Exchange-Traded Funds: (TLH), , (IEF), (DTYL), (DLBL), (ILTB), (TENZ), (ITE), (TLO), (EDV), (VGIT), (VGLT), (TMF), (TYD), (LBND), (UBT), (UST), (TMV), (TYO), (DSTJ), (DSXJ), (SBND), (PST), (DTYS), (DLBS), (TBF), (TTT), (TYNS), (TYBS), (TBX).

Best Dow Dividend Companies To Buy For 2015: Acacia Research Corporation(ACTG)

Acacia Research Corporation, through its subsidiaries, acquires, develops, licenses, and enforces patented technologies in the United States. It assists patent owners with the prosecution and development of their patent portfolios; protection of their patented inventions from unauthorized use; generation of licensing revenue from users of their patented technologies; and enforcement against unauthorized users of their patented technologies. The company owns or controls the rights to approximately 200 patent portfolios, which include the United State?s patents and foreign counterparts covering technologies used in various industries. Acacia Research Corporation was founded in 1992 and is based in Newport Beach, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Monica Gerson]

  Breaking news

  NASDAQ OMX Group (Nasdaq: NDAQ) and Borsa Istanbul A.S. have today concluded a wide-ranging agreement, which includes the delivery of market-leading technologies and advisory services to Borsa Istanbul, and NASDAQ OMX taking an equity stake in Borsa Istanbul. To read the full news, click here. Acacia Research (NASDAQ: ACTG) announced today that its Bolt MRI Technologies LLC subsidiary has entered into an agreement with Fonar Corporation (NASDAQ: FONR). To read the full news, click here. Douglas Emmett, (NYSE: DEI) announced that William Kamer will be retiring from full time service as its Chief Investment Officer effective January 31, 2014. Mr. Kamer will continue to be employed by Douglas Emmett as a Senior Advisor. To read the full news, click here. Acacia Research (NASDAQ: ACTG) announced today that its Brandywine Communications Technologies LLC subsidiary has entered into a settlement and patent license agreement with Alcatel-Lucent USA (NYSE: ALU). To read the full news, click here.

  Posted-In: Benchmark US Stock FuturesNews Eurozone Futures Global Pre-Market Outlook Markets

• [By Luke Jacobi]

  Acacia Research (NASDAQ: ACTG) was down 21.10 percent to $15.48 after the company reported Q3 results. Stephens downgraded the stock from Overweight to Underweight.

Best Dow Dividend Companies To Buy For 2015: Skilled Healthcare Group Inc.(SKH)

Skilled Healthcare Group, Inc., through its subsidiaries, operates skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, hospices, home health providers, and a rehabilitation therapy business. Its skilled nursing facilities provide specialty care, such as chemotherapy, enteral/parenteral nutrition, tracheotomy care, and ventilator care, as well as offers various services, including room and board, special nutritional programs, social services, recreational activities, and related healthcare and other services. These skilled nursing facilities include Express Recovery, a unit that provides skilled nursing care and rehabilitation therapy for patients recovering from conditions, such as joint replacement surgery, and cardiac and respiratory ailments. The company?s assisted living facilities provide residential accommodations, activities, meals, security, housekeeping, and assistance in the activities of daily living to seniors who are independent or who require some support , but not the level of nursing care provided in a skilled nursing facility. Skilled Healthcare Group also offers ancillary services, such as physical, occupational, and speech therapy, as well as rehabilitation therapy service to third-party skilled nursing operators. In addition, the company offers hospice services comprising palliative and clinical care, education, and counseling with a focus on the physical, spiritual, and psychosocial needs of terminally ill individuals and their families. As of December 31, 2010, it owned or leased 78 skilled nursing facilities and 22 assisted living facilities, together comprising 10,830 licensed beds in California, Texas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nevada, and New Mexico. The company has a joint venture with APS?Summit Care Pharmacy, LLC that operates a pharmacy in Austin, Texas. Skilled Healthcare Group, Inc. is based in Foothill Ranch, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rich Smith]

  Foothill Ranch, Calif.-based Skilled Healthcare (NYSE: SKH  ) needs a new CEO.

  On Monday, the assisted living facilities operator announced that Chief Executive Officer Boyd Hendrickson plans to retire from the company at the end of this year. A search for a replacement is now under way.

Best Dow Dividend Companies To Buy For 2015: QEP Resources Inc (QEP)

QEP Resources, Inc. (QEP), incorporated on May 17, 2010, is a holding company. The Company operates in three lines of business: gas and oil exploration and production, midstream field services, and energy marketing. It conducted through three principal subsidiaries: QEP Energy Company (QEP Energy) acquires, explores for, develops and produces natural gas, oil, and natural gas liquids (NGL); QEP Field Services Company (QEP Field Services) provides midstream field services, including natural gas gathering, processing, compression and treating services for affiliates and third parties; andQEP Marketing Company (QEP Marketing) markets affiliate and third-party natural gas and oil, provides risk-management services, and owns and operates an underground gas-storage reservoir. QEP operates in the Northern and Southern Regions of the United States and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Principal offices are located in Denver, Colorado; Salt Lake City, Utah; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

QEP�� exploration and production business is conducted through QEP Energy in two core regions, the Northern Region (including the states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and North Dakota) and the Southern Region (including the states of Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana). QEP Energy has approximately 50,800 net acres of Haynesville Shale lease rights in northwest Louisiana and additional lease rights that cover the Hosston and Cotton Valley formations. The depth of the top of the Haynesville Shale ranges from approximately 10,500 feet to 12,500 feet across QEP Energy�� leasehold and is below the Hosston and Cotton Valley formations that QEP Energy has been developing in northwest Louisiana for over a decade. As of December 31, 2011, QEP Energy had three operated rigs drilling in the project area. QEP Energy�� Midcontinent properties cover all properties in the Southern Region except the Haynesville/Cotton Valley area of northwest Louisiana and are distributed over an area, including the ! Anadarko Basin of Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. QEP Energy has approximately 77,000 net acres of Woodford Shale lease rights in western Oklahoma. QEP Energy has approximately 38,700 net acres of Granite Wash/Atoka Wash lease rights in the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma and has been drilling vertical Granite Wash/Atoka Wash wells. The Company estimates that up to 1,100 additional wells will be required to fully develop its Pinedale acreage on a combination of 5 and 10-acre density. In addition to QEP Energy�� gross producing wells, QEP Energy had an overriding royalty interest in an additional 21 wells at Pinedale. QEP Energy owns interests in approximately 255,200 net leasehold acres in the Uinta Basin. The remainder of QEP Energy Northern Region leasehold interests, productive wells and proved reserves are distributed over a number of fields and properties managed as the Rockies Legacy division. Exploration and development activity during the year ended December 31, 2011, includes wells in the Powder River and Greater Green River Basins in Wyoming and the Williston Basin in North Dakota. QEP Energy has approximately 90,000 net acres of lease rights in the Williston Basin in western North Dakota, where the Company is targeting the Bakken and Three Forks formations.

QEP Energy Company

QEP Energy is actively involved in several of North America�� hydrocarbon resource plays. QEP�� exploration and production activities are conducted through QEP Energy. P Energy operates in two core regions: the Northern Region (including the states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and North Dakota) and the Southern Region (including the states of Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana). The Southern Region contributed approximately 56% of 2011 production while the Northern Region contributed the remaining 44%. QEP Energy reported 3,614 billion cubic feet of natural gas equivalent of estimated proved reserves as of December 31, 2011. Of those estimated proved reserves, approximately 64%! , or 2,31! 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas equivalent, were located in the Northern Region at December 31, 2011. The remaining 36%, or 1,302 billion cubic feet of natural gas equivalent at December 31, 2011, were located in the Southern Region. QEP Energy has an inventory of identified development drilling locations, primarily on the Pinedale Anticline in western Wyoming; the Haynesville/Cotton Valley area in northwestern Louisiana; the Midcontinent area with properties primarily in Oklahoma and Texas; the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah, and the Rockies Legacy, which includes the Bakken/Three Forks area in western North Dakota and other properties in Wyoming.

QEP Field Services Company

QEP invests in midstream (gathering, processing and treating) systems to complement its natural gas, oil and natural gas liquids (NGL) operations in regions where QEP Energy has production. In addition, QEP�� midstream business also provides midstream services to third-party customers, including independent producers. QEP Field Services owns various natural gas gathering, treating and processing facilities in the Northern and Southern Regions as well as 78% of Rendezvous Gas Services, LLC, (RGS), a partnership that operates gas gathering facilities in western Wyoming. The FERC-regulated Rendezvous Pipeline Co., LLC (Rendezvous Pipeline), a wholly owned subsidiary of QEP Field Services, operates a 21-mile, 20-inch-diameter pipeline between QEP Field Services��Blacks Fork gas-processing plant and the Muddy Creek compressor station owned by Kern River Gas Transmission Co. (Kern River Pipeline). RGS gathers natural gas for Pinedale Anticline and Jonah Field producers for delivery to various interstate pipelines. QEP Field Services also owns 38% of Uintah Basin Field Services, LLC (UBFS) and 50% of Three Rivers Gathering, LLC (Three Rivers). These two partnerships operate natural gas gathering facilities in eastern Utah.

QEP Marketing Company

QEP Marketing provides wholesale market! ing and s! ales of affiliate and third-party natural gas, oil and NGL. As a wholesale marketing entity, QEP Marketing concentrates on markets in the Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest and Midcontinent that are either close to affiliate reserves and production or accessible by pipelines. QEP Marketing contracts for firm-transportation capacity on pipelines and firm-storage capacity at Clay Basin, a baseload-storage facility. QEP Marketing, through its subsidiary Clear Creek Storage Company, LLC, owns and operates an underground gas-storage reservoir in southwestern Wyoming. QEP Marketing uses owned and leased storage capacity together with firm-transportation capacity.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Dimitra DeFotis]

  Sterne Agee said in July research that operators with Bakken-formation leverage, including Oasis, Superior Energy Services�(SPN),�Whiting Petroleum (WLL) and QEP Resources (QEP),�“have improved their communication with Wall Street and appropriately managed expectations for the impact that flooding in North Dakota could have on second-quarter earnings.” �See Barron’s Investor’s Soapbox PM�for�July 17, subscription required.)

• [By Daniel Gibbs]

  Strong forward growth prospects
  Towards the end of 2013, Vanguard announced�that it is spending $581 million to acquire a stake in two of the most prolific natural gas fields in the United States. These two fields are the Pinedale Anticline and Jonah fields located in southwestern Wyoming. The fields currently contain 2,000 producing wells between them, but Ultra Petroleum (NYSE: UPL  ) and QEP Resources (NYSE: QEP  ) , the operators for the fields and Vanguard's partners in the development of these fields, plan to drill another 970 wells, which will obviously substantially increase Vanguard's production from the fields going forward.

Best Dow Dividend Companies To Buy For 2015: Petrosonic Energy Inc (PSON)

Petrosonic Energy, Inc, incorporated on June 11, 2008, is a development-stage company. The Company focused on the treatment and upgrading of heavy oil by sonicated solvent de-asphalting. On July 27, 2012, the Company completed the acquisition of 60% ownership in Petrosonic Albania, SHA. from Sonoro.

The Company�� core technology is an industrial scale sonic reactor that transfers sonic energy on an industrial scale to physical, chemical or biological processes. As of December 31, 2012, the Company had not generated any revenue.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Namitha Jagadeesh]

  Pearson Plc (PSON) surged 6.2 percent to 1,329 pence, its highest price since 2001. The publisher of the Financial Times newspaper posted first-half sales of 2.76 billion pounds ($4.2 billion), exceeding the 2.69 billion pounds estimated by analysts in a Bloomberg survey.

Best Dow Dividend Companies To Buy For 2015: Oracle Corporation(ORCL)

Oracle Corporation, an enterprise software company, develops, manufactures, markets, distributes, and services database and middleware software, applications software, and hardware systems worldwide. It licenses of database and middleware software, including database management software, application server software, service-oriented architecture and business process management software, data integration software, business intelligence software, identity and access management software, content management software, portals and user interaction software, development tools, and Java; and applications software comprising enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, enterprise performance management, supply chain management, business intelligence applications, enterprise portfolio project management, Web commerce, and industry-specific applications software. The company also offers customers with rights to unspecified software product upgrades and maintenance releases; Internet access to technical content; and Internet and telephone access to technical support personnel. In addition, its hardware systems products consist of computer server and hardware-related software, including the Oracle Solaris Operating System; and storage products, such as tape, disk and networking solutions for open systems and mainframe server environments. Its hardware systems support solutions include software updates for the software components. Further, the company offers consulting solutions in business and IT strategy alignment, enterprise architecture planning and design, initial product implementation and integration, and ongoing product enhancements and upgrades; cloud services, including Oracle Cloud Services and Advanced Customer Services; and education solutions comprising instructor-led, media-based, and Internet-based training in the use of its software and hardware products. The company was founded in 1977 and is headquartered in Redwood Ci ty, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  Wall Street had another rising day, with the Dow Industrials and the S&P 500 reaching new record highs. But one tech stock tanked and the momentum took a bunch of others in the sector down with it. The Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI) closed 25 points higher, the Nasdaq composite (^IXIC) added 8 points, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index (^GPSC) was up 3 points. One of the top gainers on the S&P 500 was used car giant CarMax (KMX). Its share price zoomed higher by 16.5 percent with revenue and profits hitting record levels. The still lackluster economic recovery is causing many to drive off lots in used cars instead of new vehicles. And the hottest model over the past two years? The Nissan Altima. Automotive retailer AutoNation (AN), which runs new and used dealerships, also got a boost, rising more than 5 percent. It was a different story for software giant Oracle (ORCL), which was one of the S&P 500's biggest losers. Its stock fell 4 percent on sagging earnings. Social media stocks fell too. Pandora (P) was down 1.5 percent as was Groupon (GRPN), LinkedIn (LNKD) lost almost 1 percent and Amazon (AMZN) fell less than 1 percent two days after unveiling its first smartphone. But poor Radioshack (RSH). Its stock hit a new low, trading below a dollar a share for the first time after falling almost 10 percent. Since the beginning of the year the stock is down 64 percent. One analyst has a price target of zero on the stock. Ouch. (We hope you don't have that one in your portfolio.) And Darden's (DRI) earnings weren't very appetizing. Profits came in much lower than expected and guidance was weak. The stock fell 4 percent. It is selling its Red Lobster chain and trying to focus on revamping Olive Garden. Solar stocks had a bright day, though. Shares of SunEdison (SUNE) shone brightly rising 1.5 percent on news it was acquiring some solar farms in Massachusetts. Other solar stocks also basked on the day. Canadian Solar gained 6 percent, and

• [By Roland Head]

  Oracle (NYSE: ORCL  ) stock is likely to be actively traded when markets open. The firm's stock is down 7.6% in premarket trading after its fourth-quarter sales of $10.95 billion missed analysts' expectations for revenue of $11.12 billion, though the firm met adjusted earnings forecasts of $0.87 per share. Oracle's full-year results hit consensus forecasts for earnings of $2.68 per share, but revenue fell slightly short again, leaving investors concerned by weak sales at the software giant. On a more positive note, Oracle announced that it was doubling its dividend to $0.12 per share.

• [By prabhat71]

  Oracle (ORCL) recently released its results for the fourth quarter, which were not so impressive. The company failed to post impressive revenue and earnings. The shares of Oracle also nosedived as investors didn�� receive the results positively. It is a serious issue for the company to check. However, management thinks that Oracle can still perform better on the back of some good moves that the company is planning, including some acquisitions and transitions.