Cash Flow Is Key… When it comes to evaluating the safety of a dividend, the first thing we need to verify – given the current economic slowdown – is demand for a company’s products. After all, a company needs to generate a steady stream of cash in order to keep paying its shareholders.

The US dollar index has jumped 10% since early July.

This has had a negative effect on commodity prices. It has also brought considerable relief to consumers in the form of lower gas prices.

However, US exporters have watched their products become 10% more expensive in just two months.

Andrew Gordon says shorting US stocks with a heavy reliance on overseas sales is a great way to profit from US dollar strength. He lists the ten companies most vulnerable to further gains in the buck.

This is not the kind of thing you hear often in contrarian investing circles.

According to Jeremey Siegel, a professor of finance in the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvannia. “Stocks remain your best investment for the long run. Neither bonds nor gold can match stocks if you have an adequate time horizon.”

Gold bugs Bill Bonner and The Mogambo Guru may disagree. But Floyd Brown at InvestmentU.com says “given the bank and mortgage defaults and the depressing results of stocks this summer, Siegel’s message was reassuring and full of optimism.”

Editors’ Note: What’s the best-performing US stock for the last half-century?

It’s a blue-chip company. But it’s not a bank. Or a car manufacturer. Or Mircorsoft. Or Google.

U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers will likely cut its key interest rate to 2.0% from 2.25% this, which would mark the seventh such move since the central bank launched its rate-reduction campaign in mid-September.

In the world of investing, sometimes the separate parts are worth more than the whole. Those parts are called “corporate spin-offs,” and as far as investment plays go, they can be one of the safest and most-profitable hands that investors can play – especially against a market backdrop as uncertain as the one we face now.

The Investment U e-Letter: Issue #783
Monday, April 7, 2008

A Contrarian Strategy: Why Clear Channel Is Today’s Top Stock Pick
by Floyd G. Brown, Advisory Panelist, Investment U

One of the most profitable investments I have made came after a magazine headline hailed the coming bankruptcy of Philip Morris. It took nerves of steel to buy the lowly MO in those days. It was after the largest legal settlement in U.S. history disgorged Morris and other tobacco stocks of profits to pay the healthcare bills of the 50 different United States. Attorney General Janet Reno attacked the company in the newspapers as merchants of death.

But in the eight years since I first bought Philip Morris, at around $19 a share, I have been paid a…