Dividends
Edited by Toddi Gutner
The Stat
71 percent of the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index paid annual dividends in 2002, down from 87% in 1982.
Data: Prudential Securities
TIME OFF
Up from the Deep
Where to find Titanic treasures
What do Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, Lafayette, La., and Paris have in common? All are currently hosting an exhibit of Titanic artifacts (titaniconline.com) recovered from the floor of the Atlantic. At the Detroit Science Center, see a copper cherub that adorned the grand staircase and the pocket watch of a man who perished after helping his family into a lifeboat. You'll hear the music played on the great liner or touch a mock iceberg to feel the water's temperature that fateful night.
STOCKS
Return of the P-E
During the boom years, when price-to-earnings ratios zoomed off the charts, Wall Street analysts told us p-e's didn't matter. Look to other ratios, like price-to-sales, price-to-cash flow, or even price-to-mouse-clicks as the way to value a company's stock, they argued.
Well, it turns out, the humble p-e ratio does the best job, according to a recent Merrill Lynch study. An investor who consistently bought the 50 stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index with the lowest trailing 12-month p-e's produced better returns from 1986 through 2002 than an investor using the 50-cheapest-stock strategies for eight other valuation ratios. The p-e strategy delivered a 17.2% annualized return. By comparison, price-to-cash flow returned only 13.1%, price-to-sales, 11.9%, and price-to-book value, 12.4%.
Even more curious, buying stocks with the lowest forecast p-e's delivered only 15.4% annualized returns. That's surprising, because pundits have always advised investors to buy stocks on future profit expectations, not past results.
By Lewis Braham
CAMERAS
Dry As Pixel Dust
 Splashes and puddles don't bother the $399 Olympus Stylus 300 Digital, the first all-weather digital camera with a metal body. The 3.2-megapixel shooter has a plastic, protective inner chassis, and all gaps are sealed with rubber gaskets. Still, for snorkeling snapshots, you'll need an underwater housing ($200), good to depths of 130 feet.
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Copyright 2003, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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