When trying to get your portfolio balanced with the right asset allocation and diversification, it can become a little daunting to try and follow companies whose products or services are outside of what you know, a lot of the well known investors all say that you should always “Invest in what you know” but there is a problem with this. What if what you know keeps your portfolio not very well diversified? This means that you are taking on extra risk due to a case where something in your industries goes terribly wrong and your stocks start to come tumbling down. There are a few options, you can take, you can learn about these other industries, and then make informed investing decisions, you can just invest in them and hope all goes well, or you can choose to invest in an ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) or Index fund and let the professionals take care of that part of your portfolio.

I have made a change to my stock analysis template this week, I am going to stop looking at the return on equity and the debt to equity values and instead replace them with the Graham number of the stock. I believe this change more suits my style of investing and brings us to a more valued approach. The Graham Number tells us a price, and if the price of the stock falls below this number then it is a good time to buy the stock and it will receive a full point in my analysis.

Today I thought That I would cover a financial services holding company that has interests in insurance, and investment management. Seeing as this is my first stock analysis after becoming an associate member of the DIV-Net, I hope you enjoy todays analysis and please let me know in the comments what you thought, or if you have any constructive criticism for my analysis template.

About the company:

Today I want to outline an interesting investing strategy that I have been playing with in the back of my mind for quite some time now. As many of our readers know, I am a strong advocate of the Dividend Based Investment style, but at the same time I love the use of technical analysis and short term trades because they play to my more adventurous and risk taking side. I like to keep my portfolio around 80-90% invested in quality dividend based stocks (with some bond exposure mixed in for obvious reasons), the last 10-20% of my portfolio I like to call my 'play money' and I use it for short term trades and to keep things active and interesting.

The Bullish Dividends portion of this site is very proud to have been accepted as an Associate Member of the new investing network The DIV-Net, which focuses on dividend investing, value investing and a long-term buy and hold philosophy. The authors of The DIV-Net want this network to be the premier destination for readers interested in a variety of investing insight, stock analysis and perspectives that might otherwise be found fragmented across the web.

Dividend Based Investing highlights an interesting article from GlobeAdvisor.Com called Value investors: Beware the value trap that is worth a quick read.

The Dividend Guy gives us his stock analysis for United Parcel Service Inc (UPS-N).

Dividends4Life Gives Analyzes two dividend stocks this past week, Check them out!

There are a few key components that will make or break your long term success in a dividend based approach. We have covered how to find solid dividend stocks as well as a few ways to help see if they are good investments. But the one I want to talk about today is usually overlooked by short sighted investors. It’s the act of reinvesting all of the dividends you receive from your investments.

Last week we covered Empire Company (TSE: EMP-A), so this week to round off our local grocery giants, is Loblaws Inc. (TSE: L). Lets see how Loblaws Scores and then we'll compare the two to see whcih one is the better Dividend Based investment according to my analysis.

About the company:

Here is Company description of what they do, which can be found on their website here