This Preferred Stock List example is available for viewing by the general public. All other help topics seen here require a subscriber username and password.

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Subscribers to the CDx3 Notification Service (what's this?) can use Preferred Stock List TM to quickly locate preferred stocks that are consistent with their individual goals, financial resources and risk tolerance.

 

As you are about to see in this example of how to use the Preferred Stock List TM program, there's no need to type anything or install any software on your computer. Just point and click.

 

What We're Looking For

This example uses a very common scenario for preferred stock investors so you should find this very applicable to your own preferred stock investing. Note that this is only an example and is presented here for illustration purposes only.

 

In this example, we will use Preferred Stock List TM to find preferred stocks that:

 

Objective #1: are just the highest rated, highest quality issues trading on U.S. stock exchanges: we just want to consider preferred stocks that (a) have an investment grade rating, (b) have the 'cumulative' dividend provision (so that even if the issuing company skips a dividend payment to you they still owe you the money), and (c) are issued by companies that have a perfect track record of never having suspended a preferred stock divided payment.

 

Objective #2: are available to be purchased right now for less than their par value of $25.00 per share: in the event that the issuing company retires your shares downstream, they will buy your shares back from you for $25.00 per share. Knowing this in advance, you can position yourself for a future capital gain and help protect your principal by purchasing your shares today for less than $25.00 (referred to as the 'par value' or the 'liquidation price').

 

Objective #3: provide a current annual dividend yield of at least 7%: At a time when bank CD's are paying less than 2% and AAA-rated corporate bonds are around 4.5%, earning 7% starts to look very attractive to many income investors.

 

Objective #4: are within a few days of the dividend cutoff date for this quarter: One of the great things about preferred stocks is that whomever owns the shares on the morning of the dividend cutoff date (the 'ex-dividend date') is entitled to the upcoming dividend payment for the quarter. That means that even if you only own the shares for just a few days, you are going to receive 90 days worth of dividend income if you purchase your shares before the ex-dividend date. So we are looking for preferred stocks that have an ex-dividend date coming up within the next few days.

 

4 Out Of 919

How many preferred stocks trading on U.S. stock exchanges do you think meet these typical objectives? The answer when this example was put together on January 23, 2011, is four.

 

In January 2011 there were 919 preferred stocks being traded on U.S. stock exchanges; we're after four.

 

Before we begin, ask yourself this question: looking at the list of 919 U.S.-traded preferred stocks, how long would it take you to identify the four preferred stocks that we're after? After polling colleagues, the answer is probably somewhere between 30 minutes and 5 hours (with somewhat uncertain results) depending on what tools you have available to you.

 

Using Preferred Stock List TM you are about to see how, by just clicking your mouse, you can identify the four preferred stocks that meet the above objectives in about 90 seconds.

 

That's the power of Preferred Stock List TM.

 

Launch The Preferred Stock List TM Program

Once you have signed onto the subscriber's exclusive website (how to become a subscriber) click on the "Preferred Stock List TM" tab to launch the Preferred Stock List TM program. If you are already a CDx3 Notification Service subscriber, feel free to tab back and forth between the Preferred Stock List TM program and this example and actually execute these steps as we go along here.

 

 

 

The Preferred Stock List TM program will open on your screen:

 

 

Now let's dive in. We'll use Preferred Stock List TM to knock down our four objectives one at a time.

 

 

Objective #1: Just The Highest Rated Issues

 

This is a common objective of preferred stock investors so Preferred Stock List TM comes with a selection that allows you to grab the highest rated, highest quality preferred stocks in one shot. These are preferred stocks that meet the ten CDx3 Selection Criteria from the book Preferred Stock Investing, including those that are rated investment grade, have cumulative dividends and are issued by companies that have a perfect track record of never having suspended preferred stock dividends. Such preferred stocks are called "CDx3 Preferred Stocks."

 

Click the little down arrow on the Preferreds To View drop-down list then click the CDx3 Preferred Stocks option and click Go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just like that, objective #1 has been met. The resulting list includes the highest rated U.S.-traded preferred stocks. In one step we have narrowed the list down from 919 to 49 remaining issues. The list is initially sorted by IPO Date. This is the date that the preferred stock was first introduced by the issuing company. All of the listed preferred stocks are currently trading on the U.S. stock exchange indicated under the 'Exchange' column (most commonly the New York Stock Exchange).

 

 

 

Note that since this example walkthrough is available to the general public (not just current subscribers to the CDx3 Notification Service) the identifying information for CDx3 Preferred Stocks has been obscured in order to preserve the value of existing subscriptions.

 

 

 

Objective #2: Available Right Now For Less Than $25.00 Per Share

 

Notice that Preferred Stock List TM includes current trading data as it changes throughout the trading day. Last Price, Volume and Yield change as trades are cleared in near-real time.

 

To quickly identify the preferred stocks that are available right now for less than $25.00 per share, just sort the list by the Last Price column. Notice that the column headings are blue. That means that they are clickable. Clicking a column heading once sorts the column in ascending order (smallest to largest); clicking the heading again changes the sort order to descending (largest to smallest).

 

Click the Last Price column once to sort the current market prices in ascending order (smallest prices will therefore be listed first).

 

 

The preferred stocks selling for less than $25.00 per share are now on top of the list. You can grab the vertical scroller with your mouse and scroll the list down to see the rest of these preferred stocks, now sorted by Last Price.

 

Objective #2 has now been met. We can now identify the highest quality preferred stocks trading on U.S. stock exchanges that are currently available for a market price less than $25.00 per share. We're already half way through with our four objectives.

 

Before we move on to objective #3, let's clean up our list a bit.

 

Since we are only interested in the listed preferreds that are selling for less than $25.00 per share, let's simplify the list by eliminating all of the preferreds that are selling for a price greater than $25. It's easy to do and will make our list easier to look at.

 

See the checkbox on the far left of each row? You can use that checkbox to build you own preferred stock watchlists.

 

 

 

Once you've checked the rows we're interested in, use the Preferreds To View drop-down list again to tell Preferred Stock List TM to show just the preferred stocks that you have checked.

 

Select the View Checked Rows Only option and click the Go button.

 

This will clean up our list considerably so that we can focus on just the preferred stocks that we are interested in - the highest quality issues selling for less than $25.00 per share right now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this example, we have now narrowed the field down from 919 preferred stocks to just 19.

 

 

Objective #3: Provide A Current Annual Dividend Yield Of At Least 7%

 

Of the remaining 19 preferred stocks, we are just interested in the issues that are currently producing an annual dividend yield of at least 7%. To have Preferred Stock List TM identify these preferred stocks for you, just sort the list by the Yield column. Clicking the Yield column heading once will sort the list in ascending order (smallest to largest). Clicking the column heading a second time will re-sort the list in descending order, bringing the highest yielding preferred stocks to the top for us.

 

 

 

Looking down the Yield column on the above screen image we can clearly see preferred stocks that have a current annual yield of at least 7%. Objective #3 is now met.

 

The first 11 issues are the ones that we are after. But before we move on to our last objective let's simplify the list again by using the checkboxes to select just the top 11 rows (just the preferred stocks that have a current yield of at least 7%).

 

 

Notice that the Preferreds To View drop-down list is still set to 'View Checked Rows Only' from last time so all we have to do now (once the top 11 rows are checked) is click the Go button and Preferred Stock List TM will shorten the list to just the 11 preferred stocks that we are interested in.

 

 

Objective #4: A Few Days Before The Dividend Cutoff Date

 

This is our last objective. In just a few mouse clicks we have used Preferred Stock List TM to narrow the original list of 919 U.S.-traded preferred stocks down to 11 specific issues that meet our first three objectives.

 

For our last objective, we want to identify issues that, should we buy them today, we would be in time for the upcoming quarterly dividend payment (the ex-dividend date for the current quarter is still a few days away).

 

By clicking on the Ex-Div Date column heading, Preferred Stock List TM will sort the remaining preferred stocks by their ex-dividend dates.

 

 

Here's our list sorted by Ex-Dividend Date.

 

 

 

With our list sorted by Ex-Dividend Date we can clearly see that the ex-dividend dates for the top four preferred stocks are just a few days away (this list was prepared on January 23, 2011). Purchasing shares of any of these preferred stocks prior to the indicated dates will entitle you to the upcoming quarterly dividend payment.

 

That means that you will have your money invested for only three or four days but will receive 90 days worth of dividend income from the issuing company.

 

Summary

 

We have now met all four objectives. The top four preferred stocks are rated investment grade, pay cumulative dividends, are issued by companies with perfect track records of never having suspended dividends on a preferred stock, are available today for a market price less than their par value of $25.00, pay an annual dividend of at least 7% and, if you buy your shares within the next few days, you will receive the upcoming 90 day's worth of dividend income.

 

We used Preferred Stock List TM to find CDx3 Preferred Stocks (the highest quality issues), clicked on the Last Price column heading to sort the list by Last Price, identifying the issues trading for less than $25 per share; clicked again on the Yield column heading to sort the resulting list by Yield which showed us the preferred stocks currently earning at least 7% and clicked one last time to sort the remaining list by Ex-Dividend Date.

 

In less than 90 seconds, Preferred Stock List TM found the four U.S.-traded preferred stocks that meet all of our objectives out of the original 919.

 

Bonus Example - Saving The List

 

Preferred Stock List TM allows you to save the resulting list of preferred stocks as a 'Watchlist' of trading symbols for quick retrieval later or as a complete spreadsheet file with all of the data that you see displayed for further analysis using a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel.

 

To save your list as a symbol watchlist, drop down the Save As drop-down list, click on the Symbol Watchlist... option and click the Go button.

 

 

A window will open on your screen that allows you to assign your symbol watchlist a name and save it to your computer.

 

Once you've saved your list as a symbol watchlist, you can retrieve it later by using the Symbol Watchlist... option under the Preferreds To View drop-down list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Preferred Stock List TM is an easy to use and very powerful preferred stock data gathering engine provided to subscribers to the CDx3 Notification Service. With Preferred Stock List TM preferred stock investors are able to spend their time investing in preferred stocks rather than searching for information about them.

 

Many Happy Returns,

Doug K. Le Du, author of Preferred Stock Investing

 

 

    
         
         
         
 

 

 

 
  (c) 2010 Doug K. Le Du.
Preferred Stock List, CD Times 3, CDx3, CDx3 Income Engine, CDx3 Portfolio, CDx3 Preferred Stock, CDx3 Perfect Market Index, CDx3 Key Rate Chart are trademarks of Doug K. Le Du. All rights reserved.
DISCLAIMER: The content of this web site, and the materials that it links to that are owned by Doug K. Le Du, are to be regarded as educational, rather than advisory. There can always be exceptions to trends and/or generalizations that may be presented herein. Consider your financial resources and goals before investing. You, and not Doug K. Le Du, are solely responsible for your own investment decisions.