LLY

[Horace Cugle]

I sold some LLY shares yesterday at $50.50. I bought these shares at $35, $37 and $48. The stock had been as high as $58 last spring but has not done well since and they haven't raised the dividend since Bush was in office.

LLY has had some disapointing drug trials and now they are freezing employees pay. Doesn't sound too promising so I sold 2/3rds of the position. Still a 3.9% yield is pretty good but I didn't like the news or the price action over the last few months, and I didn't think it would be wise to put more money on what might be a company with future troubles.

Now what to buy? A few I'm looking at are TGT, WMT, OKE, WMB. any others?

I missed a couple really good opportunities not very long ago - BA around $73 and AMGN at $82. Shoulda woulda coulda.

[TomK]

LLY is not a stock that I follow, so I can't speak intelligently about it, but your reasoning seems sound. If the pay freeze is fact (and not rumor), I'd say that is a pretty strong sign that they are not confident about earnings. How has earnings history been? I agree that 3.9 percent is nice, but sounds like this is not a dividend growth stock, and before long, it may not be deteriorating as even just a straight dividend stock. Getting out with a slight gain seems prudent to me!

[Horace Cugle]

Not a rumor....

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/eli-lilly-...29079.html

The generic drug worries have been going on for some time. Maybe worth taking a look at later on when the dust settles.

[KenBob]

I owned LLY for about 2 years, but have recently sold it. Without dividend growth it doesn't meet my criteria of having a dividend growth rate higher than inflation. If a stock doesn't meet your current methodology, it should be sold.

[Horace Cugle]

Agree and the rest of LLY was sold at when it spiked to $56 on 8/13.

ABBV is another. Parent ABT was a good dividend raiser for years but who knows about ABBV? Maybe they will pick up where ABT left off....or maybe not.