Sometimes I wish I had been born into a simpler time when foods that were good and bad were pretty much laid out in black and white. You were supposed to drink your milk, eat your vegetables, and avoid eating excessive amounts of chocolate if you wanted to grow up to be healthy. Nowadays, even the foods that have long since been touted as healthy for you are no longer construed as such.
If you don't believe me, just look at how many times that researchers have flip-flopped their view on the risks versus benefits of eggs. As comedian Lewis Black put it in 2000, "They said they're good, they're bad, they're good, the whites are good, the yolks are bad.... Make up your mind! It's breakfast; I've gotta eat!"
For those of you men who adhere to strictly healthier foods, or use various dietary supplements to improve your health, you may have had your bubble burst yet again in a study published online Wednesday by The Journal of the National Cancer Institute with regard to the effects of fish oil on the body over the long term.
Top Japanese Companies To Buy For 2015: Unum Group(UNM)
Unum Group, together with its subsidiaries, provides group and individual disability insurance products primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom. It also provides a portfolio of other insurance products, including employer-and employee-paid group benefits, life insurance, long-term care insurance, and related services. Its products include group long-term and short-term disability; group life and accidental death, and dismemberment; individual disability; group long-term care; voluntary benefits; group life; accident, sickness, and disability; and cancer and critical illness insurance products. The company also provides individual life and corporate-owned life insurance, reinsurance pools and management operations, group pension, health insurance, and individual annuities. Unum Group markets its products primarily to employers interested in providing benefits to their employees. The company sells its products through field sales personnel, independent brokers, consultants, and agency sales force. Unum Group was founded in 1848 and is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Rich Duprey]
Specialty insurance provider�Unum (NYSE: UNM ) announced yesterday its third-quarter dividend of $0.145 per share, an 11% increase to the payout made last quarter of $0.13 per share.
Hot Net Payout Yield Companies To Invest In Right Now: State Auto Financial Corporation(STFC)
State Auto Financial Corporation, through its subsidiaries, writes personal and business lines of insurance to individuals and small-to-medium sized businesses. The company operates through four segments: Personal insurance, Business insurance, Specialty insurance, and Investment operations. The Personal insurance segment provides personal automobile and homeowners insurance products to the personal insurance market. The Business insurance segment offers commercial automobile, commercial multi-peril, fire and allied lines, and general liability insurance covering small-to-medium sized commercial exposures in the business insurance market. The Specialty insurance segment provides commercial coverages requiring specialized product underwriting, workers? compensation, claims handling, or risk management services. The Investment operations segment offers investment portfolio management services. State Auto Financial Corporation markets its insurance products primarily through independent insurance agencies, which include retail agencies and wholesale brokers in 50 states and the District of Columbia. The company was founded in 1950 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. State Auto Financial Corporation is a subsidiary of State Automobile Mutual Insurance Company.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By CRWE]
State Auto Financial Corporation (Nasdaq:STFC), a super regional property and casualty insurance holding company, will discuss its third quarter 2012 results in a conference call on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012, at 10 a.m. ET.
Hot Net Payout Yield Companies To Invest In Right Now: West Corp (WSTC)
West Corporation, incorporated on February 22, 1994, is a provider of technology-driven, communication services. The Company offers a broad portfolio of services, including conferencing and collaboration, unified communications, alerts and notifications, emergency communications, business process outsourcing and telephony / interconnect services. The scale and processing capacity of its technology platforms, combined with its managing voice and data transactions, enables them to provide reliable, mission-critical communications designed to maximize return on investment for its clients.
Its clients include Fortune 1000 companies, along with small and medium enterprises in a variety of industries, including telecommunications, retail, financial services, public safety, technology and healthcare. It focuses on addressable markets with attractive growth characteristics have allowed them to deliver steady and profitable growth.
Unified Communications
The Company provides its clients with an integrated global suite of meeting services. Conferencing and Collaboration Services include On-Demand Audio Conferencing, which is an automated conferencing service that allows clients to initiate an audio conference at any time, without the need to make a reservation or rely on an operator; Web Conferencing and Collaboration Tools allow clients to connect remote employees and bolster collaboration among groups. These tools provide clients with the capability to make presentations and share applications and documents over the Internet, these services are offered through product, InterCall Unified Meeting, as well as through the resale of Cisco, Microsoft and Adobe products, Web conferencing services can be customized to each client�� individual needs; Video Managed Services and Video Bridging allows clients to experience real-time face-to-face conferences. These services are offered through its products, InterCall Video Conferencing and InterCall Video Managed Services in conj! unction with third-party equipment, and can be used for a wide variety of events, including training seminars, sales presentations, product launches and financial reporting calls.
InterCall offers multimedia platforms designed to give its clients the ability to create, manage, distribute and reuse content internally and externally. Through a combination of products and strategic partnerships, its clients have the tools to support diverse internal and external multimedia requirements. Event Services solutions include Audio and Video Webcasting Services, which allows users to broadcast small or multimedia presentations over the Internet. It offers its clients the flexibility of broadcasting any combination of audio, video (desktop or high-end) or PowerPoint slides using any operating system; Virtual Event Design and Hosting offers clients consulting, project management and implementation of hosted and managed virtual event and virtual environment solutions. Clients are able to provide audiences easy and instant access to content, experts and peers. Examples of virtual events include trade shows, user groups, job fairs, virtual learning environments and town hall meetings, and Operator-Assisted Audio Conferencing Services are pre-scheduled conferences for complex or important events. Operator-assisted services are customized to a client�� needs and provide a wide range of scalable features and enhancements, including the ability to record, broadcast, schedule and administer meetings.
The Company provides its clients with enterprise class IP-based communications solutions including Hosted IP-PBX and Enterprise Call Management, which allows an enterprise to upgrade its use of communications technology with a suite of cloud-based, on-demand services including full private branch exchange (PBX) functionality, advanced enterprise and personal call management tools and edge unified communications features. These services can be fully integrated with a client�� existing IP o! r legacy ! time-division multiplexing (TDM) infrastructure where required, leveraging investments already made in telephony infrastructure and providing a seamless enterprise-wide solution; Hosted and Managed Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Network, which is a suite of IP trunking solutions designed to provide enterprise clients with carrier-grade service, along with the benefits of IP-based service that allows their business to run more efficiently. These solutions deliver a consistent set of voice services across an enterprise�� infrastructure, with flexible IP and TDM trunking options for clients��on-site PBX; Unified Communications Partner Solution Portfolio, which enables them to engineer flexible and scalable solutions suitable to an enterprise�� needs, leveraging a portfolio of Microsoft and Cisco offerings integrated with its products, applications and services; Cloud-Based Security Services aggregate a set of technologies into one simple and scalable cloud-based solution that provides clients with network protection. This service can help protect the client�� network from spam and viruses, unauthorized intrusions and inappropriate Web content, while providing simplicity and consistency of security policy management and eliminating single points of failure and bottlenecks that can occur with premise-based security solutions, and Professional Services and System Integration provides its clients with advice and solutions to integrate their unified communication systems. It offers consulting, design, integration, and implementation of voice, video, messaging, and collaboration systems and services.
The Company�� technology platforms allow clients to manage and deliver automated, proactive and personalized communications. It uses multiple delivery channels (voice, text messaging, email, social media and fax), based on the preference of the recipient. For example, it delivers patient notifications, confirm appointments and send prescription reminders on behalf of its healthca! re client! s; send and receive automated outage notifications on behalf of its utility clients and transmit emergency evacuation notices on behalf of municipalities. It offers Automated Voice Notifications are customized voice messages sent on behalf of its clients that are delivered with personalized information. Its systems provide accurate detection of voice mail versus live answer, customized caller ID and retry logic; Short Message Service (SMS)/Email Alerts and Notifications are customized electronic notifications sent on behalf of its clients directly to their customers��handheld devices, wireless phones, two-way pagers or email inboxes; Social Media Messaging enables clients to deliver targeted, personalized messaging to social media sites; Multichannel Preference Management and Campaign Management Solutions allow its clients to create and manage customer information in a real-time environment. Its Web-based user interface tool allows clients to upload customer contact information, create reusable notification templates and customize campaigns, and Website and Customer Portal Management , which is a Web design service whereby it creates custom-built, interactive websites for clients. It also provides a variety of additional features and services, including hosting, search engine optimization and maintenance.
The Company competes with AT&T, Verizon, PGi, BT Conferencing, NTT, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, IBM, ON24, Thomson Reuters, Sonic Foundry, TalkPoint, Adobe, BT Conferencing, PGi, Arkadin , INXPO, 6Connex, WebEx, Verizon, BT, ShoreTel, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, XO Communications, 8x8, M5, Varolii, SoundBite Communications, PhoneTree , Silverlink Communications, Patient Prompt, Sesame Communications and Google
Communication Services
The Company is one of the providers of emergency communications services, based on the number of 9-1-1 calls that the Company and other participants in the industry facilitate. Its services are critical in facilitating public safety! agencies! ��ability to receive emergency calls from citizens. Its clients generally enter into long-term contracts and fund their obligations through monthly charges on users��telephone bills. It offers 9-1-1 Network Services are the systems that control the routing of emergency calls to the appropriate 9-1-1 centers. Its next generation 9-1-1 call handling solution is an IP-based system designed to significantly improve the information available to responders by integrating capabilities such as the ability to text, send photos or video to 9-1-1 centers as well as providing stored data such as building blueprints or personal medical data to responders. Its carrier-grade Location Based Services process over 125,000 daily requests in support of its clients��Enhanced 9-1-1 (E9-1-1) and commercial applications and 9-1-1 Telephony Systems and Services include its fully-integrated desktop communications technology solutions which public safety agencies use to enable E9-1-1 call handling. Its next generation 9-1-1 solution can be deployed in a variety of local, hosted and remote configurations, allowing public safety agencies to grow with minimal incremental investment. It operates in approximately 5,000 call-taking positions in more than 1,000 Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) in North America.
The Company�� services allow its clients to effectively communicate with their customers through inbound and outbound IVR applications using natural language speech recognition, automated voice prompts and network-based call routing services. In addition to these front-end customer service applications, it also provide analyses that helps its clients improve their automated communications strategy. Its open standards-based platform allows the flexibility to integrate new capabilities, such as mobility, social media and cloud-based services. Its Automated Call Processing includes Automated Customer Service Solutions range from speech/IVR applications and mobile solutions to SMS, chat and email. It helps ! its clien! ts engage their customers through the channels they prefer. Examples of self-service applications used by its clients are: access account balances, activation of credit cards, placing orders, FAQ�� and stop/start utility service and Voice and Data Network Management Services assist its clients as they manage or update their own contact center communications networks. It offers hosted or managed services for the operation, administration and management of voice and data networks such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network management, network automated call distribution (ACD)/multi-channel contact routing, workforce management, monitoring and predictive dialing.
The Company's telephony / interconnect Services support the merging of traditional telecom, mobile and IP technologies to service providers and enterprises. It is a provider of local and national tandem switching services to carriers throughout the United States. It leverages its customer traffic information system, sophisticated call routing and control facility to provide tandem interconnection services to the competitive marketplace, including wireless, wire-line, cable telephony and VoIP companies. Toll-Free Origination transports and switches toll free traffic originated by traditional wireline, VoIP, cable, and wireless carriers to all inter-exchange carriers (IXC) in the United States. This service provides a scalable and efficient means to pass toll free traffic to IXCs. Termination Services using its soft switch platform, national optical backbone and direct network interconnections allow for the termination of outbound toll traffic. Termination Services using its soft switch platform, national optical backbone and direct network interconnections allow for the termination of outbound toll traffic.
The Company provide its clients with agent-based services. It target opportunities that allow its agent-based services to be a part of larger strategic client engagements and with clients for whom these serv! ices can ! add value. It believes that it is known in the industry as a provider of these services. It offers a flexible model that includes on-shore, off-shore and virtual home-based agent capabilities to fit its clients needs. Agent-Based Services include Customer Care and Acquisition Services support its clients with their consumer-based communications needs. It provides customer acquisition and retention, customer care, technical support and sales services. Its customized process strategically matches its client�� goals to the appropriate solutions to maximize results; Business-to-Business and Account Management Services combines its experience, sales methodologies and technology to deliver an integrated suite of solutions that allow its clients to overcome a variety of common sales challenges across a multitude of business segments. Examples of these services include lead management, team sell, account management and sole territory coverage; Receivables Management Services support many of businesses and institutions with a fully licensed collection agency that has integrated partnerships across the telecommunications, financial services, government, healthcare and utilities industries, and Overpayment Identification and Recovery Services provides cost containment programs to organizations including: health insurance payers, third party administrators, managed care organizations, hospitals/physicians and self-insured companies. It analyzes data from multiple healthcare sources, identify incorrectly paid claims, provide targeted communications and collect funds on behalf of its clients.
The Company competes with Cassidian Communications, EmergiTech, 911-Inc, Inteliquent (formerly Neutral Tandem), Peerless Network, Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLEC), Convergys, TeleTech, Sykes, NCO, GC Services, Infosys Limited and Aegis Global.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Garrett Cook]
West Corp (NASDAQ: WSTC) shares tumbled 3.66 percent to $26.65 after the company announced an offering of $1 billion senior notes. Analysts at Morgan Stanley downgraded West Corp from Overweight to Equal-Weight.
- [By Travis Hoium]
What: Shares of communication service provider West Corporation (NASDAQ: WSTC ) jumped as much as 10% today after the company got positive ratings from analysts.
Hot Net Payout Yield Companies To Invest In Right Now: iShares Morningstar Small-Cap Value ETF (JKL)
iShares Morningstar Small Value Index Fund (the Fund) seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the Morningstar Small Value Index (the Index). The Index measures the performance of stocks issued by small-capitalization companies that have exhibited value characteristics as determined by Morningstar, Inc.'s (Morningstar) index methodology. Index constituents are drawn from the pool of liquid, United States-domiciled stocks that trade publicly on the NYSE, the AMEX or NASDAQ.
The Morningstar index methodology defines small-capitalization stocks as those stocks that form the 7% of market capitalization between the 90th and 97th percentile of the market capitalization of the stocks eligible to be included in the Morningstar US Market Index (a market index that represents approximately 97% of the market capitalization of publicly traded United States stocks). The Fund uses a representative sampling strategy in seeking to track the Index.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Todd Shriber, ETF Professor]
Unusual volume (at least 5X ADV): QuantShares US Market Neutral Anti-Beta ETF (NYSE: BTAL), iShares 10+ Year Credit Bond ETF (NYSE: CLY), iShares Morningstar Small Value ETF (NYSE: JKL) and the PowerShares Dynamic Energy ETF (NYSE: PXI).
No comments:
Post a Comment