“Bottoms are a lot better to watch than try to catch.” - I believe that was the lovely Becky Quick of CNBC that said that. I might have the exact wording wrong and welcome a correction. Anyway, a stock market bottom seems to be all anyone really wants to talk about. Today's lesson: picking a market turnaround on a candlestick chart.

Well, the markets are going crazy right now, and personally I don't think this volatility is going to end in the near future. There are a lot of stocks that are selling at a deep discount right now. And some of these stocks are the big banks here in Canada. Even though the price of crude oil hit $75 today, and the Canadian dollar has done a swan dive, the Banks here in Canada haven't taken as big a hit as I expected. This could be because a recent report said that Canada's banks are the most 'sound' in the world. In any case, I figured it might be a good time to take a quick glance at the big 5 Canadian banks and see what their current dividend yields are sitting at. I thought I'd take two metrics into consideration in todays chart.

I know in volatile markets like these it is easy to look at our portfolios and start freaking out. No one blames you if you do, because yes, its your hard earned money that has all of a sudden disappeared from your account, its your savings for retirement and all your other monetary hopes and dreams. But as a dividend investor, you need to take a stoic stance and remember that this is the very reason you got into dividend based investing. We all know that the markets are going to travel all directions, but as dividend investors we, for the most part, don't care about that. We are in it for the passive income that is generated from dividend payments. As long as the dividend payments are not in jeopardy, who cares what the stock price is. In fact, major drops in prices like this should be counted as a blessing, because now you can buy MORE shares of great dividend based stocks for the same amount of money, and this means that you can collect MORE dividends for the long run.

Okay, I've been silent for awhile, awaiting the markets to get back to business as usual since the Lehman failure and AIG getting booted off the Dow because it was ABOUT to fail. I'm actually unsure, but I don't think any Dow component has ever failed before, and when one is on the brink, that definitely is ominous. It has proved so since.

I couldn't decide what stock to analyze this week, so I decided to chose another random Dividend Achiever, so please enjoy this weeks analysis on Home Capital Group Inc.

About the company:

Here is Home Capital Group's description of what they do, which can be found on their website here

Good Morning,

I haven't done a short term pick in a while, So I figured I'd come in with one that I have been watching closely for a little bit now, Research In Motion (TSE: RIM). This pick is based solely on technical analysis so please take it as it is, my interpretation of the charts. First off, I want to say that this is a potential upcoming turnaround, I haven't seen any indications that the turnaround has happened yet, but I am expecting to see one in the near future (within the next two weeks).