There is no better time than the calm days of August to reflect on the future, and your financial plans are an important part of that future. As a special service for MoneyTalks listeners Andrew and the team at Integrated Wealth Management has created an easy to use online Financial Health Assessment that can be completed in 10 minutes. You’ll receive an automated report that includes:

• An overall Financial Health score
• Clarity on where you stand financially
• Ideas on how to improve your portfolio

CLICK HERE to start this free and confidential tool. ~ Ed

Hello again, Fools. I’m back to call your attention to three large cap stocks for your watch list — or, as I like to call them, my top “forever assets.” As a refresher, I do this because companies with a market cap of more than $10 billion: can keep your portfolio stable during periods of high volatility; and provide steady and healthy dividends year after year.

So if you’re retired (or nearing retirement) and are nervous about income, living off large-cap dividends can help ease your stress.

Let’s get to it.

Kicking things off is none other than banking gorilla Bank of Montreal (TSX:BMO)(NYSE:BMO), which currently sports a market cap of $64 billion.

BMO continues to see particularly strong growth south of the border. Just last month, in fact, the company said it has already surpassed its target of achieving one-third of its earnings from the U.S. The goal was achieved in six months instead of the 3-5 year timeframe management had targeted.

Astute Strategist’s Founder,  Ahlaam Karim talks about his take on the market, where it could be headed and in particular what he’s looking for in confirming market direction. – ed.

A rally in excess of 200 points in two weeks the S&P 500, new intraday all-time highs and in the end there’s lackluster follow through. This week the S&P 500 settled at 2950 and the Dow at 26,719 even gold came back to life settling above 1400/ounce, it has been a buyers delight. Anyone can tell you just by looking at the chart in the S&P that a run up from 2738 to 2950 in darn out impressive. There is no secret that this market is bullish over the long term, even we here at Astute Strategist are bullish over the long run, so much so that we are even looking at the Dow going around 32,000 in the next year and a bit (possibly earlier).

Now we hear you, well that’s great and wonderful but what about us in the here and now. Well, given that we have maintained weekly closes above our key numbers in the Dow and S&P things are indeed looking on the up and up. There is a slight possibility that we are to see a fake out drop before heading even higher there may even be a fake out move lower, a bounce to test the highs a move make down and then on to higher highs but that is indeed the path we see.  Our eyes are going to be on where we close this week, as it is a weekly, monthly, and quarterly close. In the Dow 26,950 for the week, 26,770 for the month. Closing below 26,155 will indicate that we are for the moment, not ready for a buying frenzy to begin. Since the quarter ends of this Friday’s closing numbers, we are watching 26,615. At the time of this post, we are above most of these levels but we do have a week of trading along with the twitter account of an ever so emotionally stable and truth-telling US president.

Time will tell if we are ready to breakout further to newer and higher highs or if we are still in a consolidation pattern. Either way, as mentioned we are bullish over the longer term time frame and a company such as Apple Inc (AAPL) is a prime example of where we would look at buying on dips and putting monies to work. If the market is set to make newer and higher highs and a stock like AAPL is in bull markets outperforming the market, where would you want to put your hard earned money to work?

Want to learn more about what Astute Strategist can do for you? click here.