The stock market was up on 3 days, but was down on 2 days, is that a good time to buy? The answer is no one knows, but it is a very good time to have a strategy in place and stick to it. It is important to have patience and do your homework. Part of that homework is work done by Gary Christie of Trading Central.

Mr. Christie used the software of his firm to search for:

companies that have positive cash flow growth to weather the storm.

companies that pay dividends, which allows you to be patient.

look for companies with a market cap of at least $5 billion and the stock market price decline has been at least 30% this year.

the S&P 500 price earnings ratio is 16.9, Mr. Christie is looking for a P/E ratio of less than 10

The companies Mr. Christie came up with are:

Company Mkt Cap CF Growth Div P/E YTD 1 YR Recent

$ bill % Yld % Perf % pref Price

Carlyle Group 7.9 29.7 5.3 6.8 -30.1 30.3 23.35

CIBC 26.0 15.8 7.7 7.4 -31.2 -27.3 58.72

Interpublic Group 6.0 76.6 6.8 8.8 -34.8 -23.3 15.78

Reliance Steel & Alum 5.9 36.0 3.0 8.6 -30.4 0.4 88.40

Everest Re Group 7.1 23.2 3.6 8.2 -36.8 -16.4 176.00

Goldman Sachs 57.2 2.3 3.2 6.8 -32.5 -25.0 160.54

American Financial 6.0 52.7 2.5 8.0 -35.2 -25.0 68.86

Omnicom Group 11.7 19.7 5.0 8.9 -35.6 -23.9 54.90

The other companies on the list were Ameriprise Financial, Aflac Inc, Snap-on Inc, State Street Corp

Linking to dividend paying stocks, when you bought the stocks you bought them for the dividend and as long as the dividend is being paid and hopefully increased, then you can continue to hold – for now the yield will be very good. With the dividends you can purchase stocks to diversify your portfolio but first you need to do your homework to determine which of the S&P 500 is worth buying. There are lots of good companies whose prices have gone down, many you might not know their names. Doing your homework allows you to buy for the correct reasons.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.