This article originally appeared on The DIV Net, on July 9, 2009.
Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is one of the world’s leading agribusiness companies, with significant market presence in agriculture processing and merchandising. ADM has approximately 230 plants location worldwide. It is one of the world’s largest processors of agricultural commodities, such as oilseeds, corn, wheat, protein meal, corn sweeteners, flour, biodiesel, ethanol, and other food and feed ingredients.
ADM is a dividend aristocrat and has been raising its dividends for last 34 years. The most dividend increase was in February 2009. I view ADM in dividend portfolio as a proxy for commodity asset class. Considering the recent turmoil in commodities sectors, my objective here is to analyze if ADM still continues to be a good dividend growth stock and how does it rate on my scale of risk-to-dividends.
Trend Analysis
Here I am looking at trends for past 8 years of corporation’s revenue and profitability. These parameters should show consistently growth trends. The trend charts and data summary are shown in images below.
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Five Assets for Hedging Against Dollar Inflation or Deflation
Many of the well known economists and investors (including Warren Buffett) have expressed concerns about inflation. Among all the experts and pundits, I believe, David Swensen gave a very pragmatic and down to earth response to this question in an interview on WealthTrack. According to Swensen, he does not know what will happen. He cannot predict it. There will be inflation if the recent pumping of money supports the economy and growth returns to US economy. If there is no growth, then there will be deflation of dollar value. His message was to address these issues with proper diversification and asset allocation. As individual investors what can we do to (or rather how can we) blunt the effect of inflation or deflation. Following are five aspects one can look into to manage their asset diversification.
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