Best Financial Companies To Own For 2014

Retirement income guru Moshe A. Milevsky has sold his retirement analytics firm, the Quantitative Wealth Management Analytics Group, to Cannex Financial Exchanges Ltd., a provider of fixed-annuity data.

Mr. Milevsky, a professor at York University, founded The Qwema Group Inc. in Toronto eight years ago. There it was incubated at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences.

The six permanent employees, along with a group of academic consultants, at Qwema will be moving 20 blocks away to their new location at Cannex's headquarters. Faisal Habib, who was previously chief operating officer at Qwema, will now lead the unit.

Top Restaurant Companies To Buy For 2015: Renasant Corporation(RNST)

Renasant Corporation operates as the bank holding company for the Renasant Bank that provides various financial and insurance services to retail and commercial customers. The company offers checking accounts, money market accounts, savings accounts, certificates of deposit, time deposits, individual retirement accounts, and health savings accounts. It also provides commercial, financial, and agricultural loans; construction loans, including loans for the construction of single family residential properties, multi-family properties, and commercial projects; residential mortgage loans; home equity loans or lines of credit; consumer loans; and equipment leasing, as well as safe deposit and night depository facilities. In addition, the company offers various fiduciary services; and administers qualified retirement plans, profit sharing and other employee benefit plans, personal trusts, and estates. Further, the company provides annuities, mutual funds, and other investment ser vices through a third party broker-dealer. Additionally, the company offers commercial and personal insurance products through carriers. As of October 21, 2011, it operated approximately 75 banking, mortgage, financial services, and insurance offices in Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. The company was founded in 1904 and is based in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rich Duprey]

  Financial services specialist�Renasant� (NASDAQ: RNST  ) �announced yesterday�its second-quarter dividend of $0.17 per share, the same rate it's paid since 2007.

• [By Monica Gerson]

  Renasant (NASDAQ: RNST) is expected to post its Q3 earnings at $0.31 per share on revenue of $60.87 million.

  Posted-In: Earnings scheduleEarnings News Pre-Market Outlook Markets

Best Financial Companies To Own For 2014: Old National Bancorp Capital Trust I(ONB)

Old National Bancorp operates as a holding company for Old National Bank, which provides financial services to individuals and commercial customers primarily in Indiana, eastern and southeastern Illinois, and central and western Kentucky. The company?s Community Banking segment originates loans, such as home equity lines of credit, residential real estate loans, consumer loans, commercial loans, commercial real estate loans, letters of credit, and lease financing; and generates deposit products comprising noninterest-bearing demand, negotiable order of withdrawal, savings and money market, and time deposits. It also offers debit and ATM cards, telephone access, online banking, and other electronic banking services. In addition, this segment provides investment services and various brokerage products, including investment options and investment advice. Further, it offers merchant cash management and other services relating to the general banking business; reinsures credit life insurance; and provides property and casualty insurance. The company?s Treasury segment manages investments, wholesale funding, interest rate risk, liquidity, and leverage for the bank; and provides capital markets products, including interest rate derivatives, foreign exchange, and industrial revenue bond financing for its commercial clients. Old National Bancorp also offers fiduciary and trust services; and insurance brokerage services, such as commercial property and casualty, surety, loss control services, employee benefits consulting and administration, and personal insurance. As of December 31, 2010, it operated 161 banking financial centers, as well as loan production or other financial services offices. The company was founded in 1834 and is headquartered in Evansville, Indiana.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Sean Williams]

  First Merchants' biggest competitor is Old National Bancorp (NASDAQ: ONB  ) , the largest bank by assets in Indiana ($9.4 billion in assets). Old National has been exercising its regional flexibility of late by closing more than a dozen Indiana-based branches and purchasing some 20 offices from Bank of America�in Michigan.

Best Financial Companies To Own For 2014: Eaton Vance Tax-Managed Global Diversified Equity Income Fund (EXG)

Eaton Vance Tax-Managed Global Diversified Equity Income Fund (the Fund) is a diversified, closed-end investment company. The Fund was established to offer investors sources of potential tax-advantaged income and gains. The Fund's primary investment objective is to provide current income and gains, with a secondary objective of capital appreciation. The Fund pursues its investment objectives by investing primarily in a diversified portfolio of domestic and foreign common stocks. The Fund invests primarily in dividend-paying domestic and foreign common stocks that qualify for favorable federal income tax treatment. In addition, the Fund writes (sells) stock index call options with respect to a portion of its common stock portfolio value. As of October 31, 2007, the Fund had written call options on 49.9% of its equity holdings. The Fund�� 10 largest equity holdings as of October 31, 2007, included Enel SPA, Nokia Oyj ADR, ENI SPA, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, BP PLC, Cesky Telecom AS, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, EMC Corp., HSBC Holdings PLC and Anadarko Petroleum Corp.

The Fund may invest in Cash Management Portfolio (Cash Management), an affiliated investment company managed by Boston Management and Research (BMR), a subsidiary of Eaton Vance Management (EVM). The Fund had a total return of -4.64% for the period from inception on February 27, 2007, to October 31, 2007.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Vivian Lewis]

  Eaton Vance Tax-Managed Global Equity Income Fund (EXG) favors active management in a declining market based on CIO Michael Wilson's strategy for closed end funds.

Best Financial Companies To Own For 2014: Spdr S&P Homebuilders Etf (XHB)

SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (the Fund) seeks to replicate as closely as possible, before expenses, the performance of the S&P Homebuilders Select Industry Index (the Index). To accomplish this, the Fund utilizes a passive or indexing approach and attempts to approximate the investment performance of its Index, by investing in a portfolio of stocks intended to replicate the Index.

The S&P Homebuilders Select Industry Index seeks to provide a representation of the homebuilders��sub-industry portion of the S&P Total Market Index. The S&P TMI tracks all the United States common stocks regularly traded on the NYSE, American Stock Exchange, NASDAQ National Market and NASDAQ Small Cap Exchanges. The Homebuilders Index is an equal weighted market cap index.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Anora Mahmudova]

  The day�� economic data provided a little support. The sales pace of existing homes ticked down in March to the slowest rate since July 2012, according to data released Tuesday, however the decline was smaller than the consensus rate forecast by economists polled by MarketWatch. The SPDR S&P Homebuilder ETF (XHB) �gained 1%.

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  The SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB) has dropped 10.5% during the past three months, or about when all the talk about an end to the Fed’s bond buying really picked up, compared to a 2.7% return for the S&P 500.

• [By Jon C. Ogg]

  1. The U.S. economy grows 3% as housing starts surpass one million and private employment hits an all-time high – All time high on private employment? 1 million housing starts?

  Homebuilder ETF: SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (NYSEArca: XHB) as it is tied to homebuilders and building products rather than including other sectors that only overlap in building. At $32.57, its 52-week range is 426.94 to $33.38. Housing Starts were always well over 1 million on an annualized basis each month before the recession, but they only reached that in two months of 2013 (St. Louis Fed data).

  2. 10-Year Treasury yields move toward 3.5% as the Federal Reserve completes tapering and holds short-term rate near zero – This may sound bad, but it is actually good and fits in line with rates not rising too much. Keep in mind that the 10-year Treasury is at 2.94% now and ended at 3.03% on the last day of 2013. Elsewhere on the yield curve, Doll sees many parts of the fixed income market to end 2014 with negative total rates of return.

• [By John Maxfield]

  Meanwhile, housing is feeling the effects via higher mortgage rates. For portions of last year, a 30-year conventional mortgage carried an interest rate of less than 3.5%. Since the Fed's announcements, the same rate has climbed back to more than 4%. This is sending shivers through homebuilders' stocks, as the net effect is to make homes more expensive. The SPDR S&P Homebuilders (NYSEMKT: XHB  ) ETF, which tracks the housing sector, is down almost 9% since May 22.