Dividends have a long history of providing returns to intelligent investors. Only in the last 60 years, has investing for stock price appreciation surpassed dividends as a key source of return in the eyes of the common investor. Recent market volatility however, has caused most players in the market to rethink their investing strategy and in many cases, re-embrace the wealth-building power of dividend investing. For those who are not already aware of fundamental benefits of dividend investing, we have provided four important arguments below.

Dividend Stocks Have Outperformed Non-Dividend Stocks over the Long Term
A very common misconception with the investing public is that dividend stocks provide a lower, albeit safer, return on investment. This has helped dividend stocks earn an ill-conceived reputation for being boring. The facts however, present a completely different picture – dividend stocks actually outperform non-dividend stocks by a significant margin over the long term.

When during the month is the best time to own equities to maximize stock market returns? Equity markets respond throughout the month to events such as earnings reports, economic news and political actions. They also respond to another event that is not as commonly followed, the month-end trade.

Thackray’s 2011 Investor’s Guide refers to the effect as “Super Seven Days”: The last four days of the month and the first three days of the following month typically yield higher returns than other periods during the month. Reasons for strength are month end “window dressing” by institutional investors and new monthly fund inflows into pensions and mutual funds that subsequently are invested into equity markets.

The month-end trade phenomenon is notable around Halloween.

Van Eck launched a new ETF seeking to capitalize on the headlines surrounding concerns over a controversial China quota restriction (embargo) on Rare Earth metals out of China. There are several such metals that are needed for high tech industries and applications ranging from weaponry to GPS systems and without these metals, both technological and military progress and supply could be brought to a screeching halt. While China claims there’s no embargo, their restrictions on exports of these materials have driven the prices for certain metals into the stratosphere – up close to 1000% in some cases. As such, the timing couldn’t be better for the launch of an ETF seeking to capitalize on further price increases. The combination of headline hype coupled with the cache of alternative investments for the masses has gotten the attention of the retail investor. The problem is, there are only a few select companies that could even be considered a remote pure-play on Rare Earth Metals. I listened in on a Bloomberg interview last night with a Van Eck representative and they did qualify that the fund also holds non-pureplay companies, and hence the name “Market Vectors Rare Earth/Strategic Metals ETF”.

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The New York Times reported yesterday that China has now decided it will resume shipping its full quota of rare earth minerals (REE). China had abruptly curtailed shipping these