5 Stable Dividend Stocks Favored By Jim Cramer

We are in the middle of the European debt crisis. Euro officials have started talking about Greece's possible exit from the euro. Moody's recently cut 26 Italian banks' ratings. The Spanish government is forcing banks to set aside an additional $38 billion to cover massive losses in real estate loans. This is the fourth attempt in three years to clean up the country's banking system.

We believe one of the best alternatives for conservative income investors is selecting stocks with low beta ratios during the negative fluctuations in the market. A stock has a low beta ratio if its returns change independently of changes in the market's returns.

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5 Dividend Stocks With Excellent Gross Margins

The companies which have long-term competitive advantage tend to have higher Gross Margin than those that don't. Gross margin shows the percentage of surplus generated per unit of the product or service sold. To have a high gross margin, a company should be efficient enough not only to recover the costs of the product or service sold, but also to provide extra income to cover costs of acceptance of risk, operating expenses, and the costs of debt.


We believe one of the best alternatives for conservative income investors is selecting dividend stocks with high gross margin. Below we complied a list of 5 stocks that have a gross margin of higher than 60%, market cap of over $10 billion and dividend yields of higher than 3%.

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Jim Simons' 10 Favorite High-Dividend Stock Picks

Jim Simons retired from Renaissance Technologies in 2010, but he still owns between 25 to 50 percent of the hedge fund. Renaissance Technologies manages over $25 billion of assets in several funds and the firm's funds earned net returns higher than 30% in 2011.
Below we compiled a list of top 10 high-dividend stocks in Renaissance Technologies' 13F portfolio at the end of December. Renaissance Technologies holds a more than $10 million position in each stock in our list. All companies have at least $1 billion market cap and dividend yields higher than 4%.

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