Brother, can you spare a dividend? and Bonds jump on global stock selloff

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City of Industry, CA --(www.USEquityNews.com)-- 02/05/2010 - Financial News industry alert provided by U.S. Equity News. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Cisco Systems has nearly $40 billion in cash. Maybe when Cisco gets to $50 billion it will finally feel comfortable using some of that moolah to pay a dividend.


Investors in tech stocks have been waiting a long time for some of the industry giants to start issuing quarterly payouts as a reward. Some, most notably Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500), Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) and Qulacomm (QCOM, Fortune 500), have initiated dividends in the past few years.

But Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500), along with Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and other cash-rich companies remain notable holdouts.

I understand the argument against techs paying a dividend. It goes like this. Growth companies are better off using their cash for purposes other than paying a dividend.

A dividend, conventional wisdom goes, is a sign that a company thinks it no longer has anything better to do with its money and is now -- gasp! -- maturing. [Read the full article]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Bond prices rose Thursday as stocks sold off worldwide amid continued fears over foreign debt problems and an unexpected increase in U.S. jobless claims.

What prices are doing: The benchmark 10-year note gained 24/32 to 98-1/32, pushing the yield down to 3.61% from 3.70% late Wednesday. Prices and yields move in opposite directions.

The 30-year bond added 1-12/32 to trade at 97-4/32 and its yield was 4.55%. The 2-year note ticked up 5/32 to 100-4/32, yielding 0.80%.

What's driving prices: The European Central Bank said it would keep its key interest rate at 1%, and though it expects the euro zone to grow at a moderate pace in 2010 it believes many countries in the area face "large, sharply rising fiscal imbalances."

Those worries weighed on European markets, and that selloff spilled over to U.S. markets. Markets in Europe were down 2% in afternoon trading, and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong closed 1.8% lower.

U.S. [Read the full article]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Super Bowl Sunday happens to be one of the hungriest days of the year for pizza-lovers, which means a nationwide windfall for pizzerias.

Pie orders typically spike by 35% on the day of the championship game compared to any other given Sunday, according to Jeremy White, editor of Pizza Today, the trade magazine for The National Association of Pizzeria Operators.

That adds up to quite the feeding frenzy, as Americans consume 30 million pizzas, or 350 slices a second, on an average day, according to the association.

White described pizza as an inexpensive and "communal" food. It's a single pie shared by multiple people. That makes it "quintessential party food" and perfect for Super Bowl parties with their average turnout of 14 revelers, he said.

"The Super Bowl is an occasion that's often spent in the home," said White. [Read the full article]

The search giant has already unveiled concept designs for its own version of a tablet, though it's unlikely that a Google tablet will hit store shelves until at least 2011.

Developers of Google Chrome OS, an open-source operating system that is set to debut in the second half of 2010, recently posted a mock tablet design on the developers' Web site chromium.org.

The design was actually unveiled two days before Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave the world its first glimpse at the iPad. But it wasn't widely noticed until this week.

According to chromium.org, Google's operating system would be optimized for a tablet that has a 5-inch to 10-inch screen, but it could work on larger devices.

The designs showed a user interface that includes large, square icons and controls, navigation tabs on the side and the ability to run multiple programs in separate, side-by-side windows at once. [Read the full article]

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