First, I want to apologize for the lack of content going up on our site here. Life has been rather busy for the Bullish Dividends Family. I am in the process of selling our house privately, and a family member that was very close has sadly passed away. Today though, I thought I'd go over some of my initial thoughts with selling our house through the ByTheOwner.com service. We have not sold yet, but we have received a lot more 'action' then I originally expected. Our house has been listed a little over 3 weeks now, and we already have two parties which I think will submit offers to us within the next week or so. Some might not think this is very good, but you only have to look at the current market situation, and the fact that we are in the midst of the holiday season which is a time most people put house hunting on hold.

Banks have always been one of the cornerstones for Dividend Based Investing, because they are dividend paying behemoths. They all like to increase their dividend payments regularly and they generally have some of the best yields to go along with these regular increases. Obviously, the banks have been hit pretty hard recently, and although I still don't believe this crisis is over, I thought I'd start doing some analysis on the banks, to see how they stack up in my fairly unforgiving dividend analysis. So, first of is a bank I have always favoured as a dividend pick.

About the company:

Here is Bank of Montreal's description of what they do, which can be found on their website here

The Benjamin Graham number that I have mentioned In a few articles and use in my Dividend Stock Analysis is not a very popular formula. It has even been said that it doesn't paint a good picture of a value stock.. In fact, at any given time, there are not many stocks on the TSX that will actually be under the Graham number. Of course, with the current market situation, just about every stock should be close if not below the Graham number, due to the dramatic fall of stock prices. For anyone who does not know, Benjamin Graham is considered the Grandfather of Value investing. His methods and ideas have been used as a cornerstone or building block of just about every value based investor since he published his book, "The Intelligent Investor". Another thing to note, is that Benjamin Graham is said to have been the mentor of investing great, Warren Buffett.

I received an email from one of our readers the other day regarding Aecon Group Ltd. (TSE: ARE). This reader had some insightful thoughts, which I got permission to share with you, along with this, I thought that I would do some more research on this company and provide you with a Stock Analysis on it. Here is what our reader Mike M. had to say about Aecon.

Last week we took a glance at the big 5 Canadian banks and their current divined yields, so I figured that I would continue on this and take a look at our top 4 financial services / insurance companies. Yesterday we had a little bit of a rally in the Canadian markets, due to some strength in resource stocks, but unfortunately the bear decided to prove its strength and took hold of todays momentum once again. Just like last week I thought I'd take two metrics into consideration for todays chart. The first and most important one, is the Dividend Yield and the second is the Payout Ratio which I feel is a good indication if future dividend increases are feasible.

Well, the markets are going crazy right now, and personally I don't think this volatility is going to end in the near future. There are a lot of stocks that are selling at a deep discount right now. And some of these stocks are the big banks here in Canada. Even though the price of crude oil hit $75 today, and the Canadian dollar has done a swan dive, the Banks here in Canada haven't taken as big a hit as I expected. This could be because a recent report said that Canada's banks are the most 'sound' in the world. In any case, I figured it might be a good time to take a quick glance at the big 5 Canadian banks and see what their current dividend yields are sitting at. I thought I'd take two metrics into consideration in todays chart.

I know in volatile markets like these it is easy to look at our portfolios and start freaking out. No one blames you if you do, because yes, its your hard earned money that has all of a sudden disappeared from your account, its your savings for retirement and all your other monetary hopes and dreams. But as a dividend investor, you need to take a stoic stance and remember that this is the very reason you got into dividend based investing. We all know that the markets are going to travel all directions, but as dividend investors we, for the most part, don't care about that. We are in it for the passive income that is generated from dividend payments. As long as the dividend payments are not in jeopardy, who cares what the stock price is. In fact, major drops in prices like this should be counted as a blessing, because now you can buy MORE shares of great dividend based stocks for the same amount of money, and this means that you can collect MORE dividends for the long run.