Today’s Daily Angle comes from Wikinvest Wire member Rob Powell of TelecomRamblings.com. You can read the full article on Rob’s blog.

Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chart Click here to download Flash Player now

View the full NYSE:T chart at Wikinvest

This one gets classified in the ‘You know nothing is happening when…’ folder. Here I am scanning the meager news and blog articles out there, and what do I find? Article after article about a mysterious gap of a few hours in the ability to buy an iPhone in New York City via AT&T’s website. The instant conclusion? That AT&T’s network in NYC must be being crushed under the weight of data traffic so badly that the company had to stop selling them. The evidence? None of any sort.

That’s right, there were no new reports of congestion and there was no actual suspension of sales. There was no stoppage of selling iPhones at any other locations like Apple’s online or retail stores, or even AT&T’s retail stores. The entire idea that they would try to manage congestion this way is so boneheaded from an engineering point of view that it boggles the mind. This was probably actually a simple outage somewhere on AT&T’s sales site, possibly an inventory problem or simply a misconfiguration due to human error when changing which zip codes are hooked up to what. I’ll bet AT&T management didn’t say anything about it because they didn’t even know about it, and were trying to figure out which of their myriads of employees tripped over the extension cord or whatever. Mysterious? Hardly.

The media – both blogosphere and traditional outlets – have been getting downright just a tad aggressive lately haven’t they? I hope they ease back a little on the iPhone frenzy next year, I don’t think I can take 365 more days in a row of hand wringing over their network congestion problems. But it’s not just the iPhone of course, do we really need to know each and every sponsor that is thinking about considering cutting back on its relationship with Tiger Woods and why?

Today’s Daily Angle comes from Wikinvest Wire member Dividend Growth Investor. You can read the full article on DividendGrowthInvestor.com.

Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chart Click here to download Flash Player now

View the full NYSE:BMY chart at Wikinvest

The last two weeks of December are typically characterized by low trading volumes, a lot of market holidays and few news regarding dividend increases. Nevertheless when a company announces its intent to raise distributions, it generally sends a positive message to markets and shareholders, especially when a company is paying at least a decent dividend yield. Several companies announced dividend increases over the past week, including Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), which continued the positive momentum of dividend raises that Pfizer (PFE) started earlier in the month.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMY) engages in the discovery, development, licensing, manufacture, marketing, distribution, and sale of pharmaceuticals and nutritional products worldwide. It operates in two segments, Pharmaceuticals and Nutritionals. The pharmaceuticals giant increased its quarterly dividend by 3.2% to 32 cents per share. Bristol-Myers Squibb does not have a consistent history of dividend increases. The stock currently yields 5.00%.

“This dividend increase reflects our ongoing commitment to deliver shareholder value,” said James M. Cornelius, chairman and chief executive officer of Bristol-Myers Squibb. “We have made excellent progress in executing our strategy and we are confident in the strength of our BioPharma business. Our performance has helped put us in a strong cash position today and we expect solid cash flows to continue in the years ahead.”

The Ensign Group, Inc (ENSG), which provides nursing and rehabilitative care services in California, Arizona, Texas, Washington, Utah, Idaho, and Colorado, increased its quarterly dividend by 11% to 5 cents per share. This is the second consecutive dividend increase for the Ensign Group, Inc since the company went public in 2007. The stock currently yields 1.30%.

Franklin Resources, Inc. (BEN), which manages families of equity, fixed income, and balanced mutual funds for its clients, increased its quarterly dividend by 5% to 22 cents per share. The investment manager also declared a special dividend of $3/share. Franklin Resources, Inc. is a dividend champion, which has increased its quarterly dividend in each of the past twenty nine years. The stock currently yields 0.90%.

Today’s Daily Angle comes from Wikinvest Wire member Richard Wilson of HedgeFundBlogger.com. You can read the full article on Richard’s blog.

Fast growing hedge funds are unlike most large hedge funds and emerging hedge fund managers. They have figured something out and are positioned to grow unlike 90%+ of the industry. Here are some lessons which can be taken away from some of the fast growing hedge funds we have worked with:

1. They take transparency serious and work to be pro-actively very transparent - more so than their competition.
2. They approach multiple investment channels but mostly ignore those completely out of their reach (example, potential pension fund clients for a $75M fund).
3. They are always developing relationships and they have dedicated internal and some external professionals always selling on their behalf.
4. They not only pedigree on their team but they are always building that pedigree through additional research, hiring of expert staff, and through speaking & writing.
5. They document their operations and make decisions based on what is best long-term for the organization rather than what is cheaper to implement today.
6. They have risk management and trading plans which are closely followed, this helps them improve their actual trading results and provides confidence to investors since their historical trading actually matches up against the decision making rules of their plans.
7. They know that “risk management” while sounding less sexy than “hedge funds” is the business they are in, and they invest in their own business accordingly.
8. They have documented, tested, and third party verified financial controls, compliance processes and audits completed at least quarterly and these reports are sent to at least board members if not investors
9. They invest and improve their infrastructure every year even if the pay-off for doing so could be 5-7 years away, ironically these are sometimes the investments which pay off the soonest though because investors recognize the type of long-term investments being made.
10. They are experts at completing due diligence processes with institutional consultants, family offices and other types of institutional investors. They have professionals who are trained for phone-based pitches and sales and hand-offs during these processes are seamless.
11. They have just as good of marketing materials as the $1B hedge funds because after investing $300,000+ in infrastructure, talent, research, and risk management it would be a waste not to spend $20,000 on presenting it in the right light in a professional manner.
12. They have seen the light that investing in the right areas does produce returns so they re-invest their money even faster and often more efficiently than even small hedge funds on a tight budget
13. They invest in training for their employees and board members who they grow more long-term relationships with than many emerging hedge fund managers might.
14. They are not only aware of the competition but they are watching them. Not in terms of what they are investing in so much as what risk management tools, software, trading tools, and USPs they are employing.
15. While hiring they look for very specific skill sets and a minimum of 7 years of experience in the industry, unless they have a policy of grooming from the ground up. Most fast growing hedge funds we know though like to hire professionals who can hit the ground running and quickly integrate as part of the team. They actually have an HR department or at least one person who is head of talent development and HR related activities, something almost all small hedge funds lack. When they are asked on the phone by institutional consultants if they plan on adding anyone they have a sophisticated intelligent answer instead of the generic, “we may add an analyst within the next 3 quarters.”
16. They understand the “trust by verify” mindset of investors and they make it easy to verify everything.
17. They conduct more due diligence on business partners, investors, and potential employees than some retail investors spend on investing in small emerging manager hedge funds.
18. They realize their success is never going to be built on one software program, capital raising process, or investment trend so they constantly are working to build their 1,000 blocks of competitive advantage and ability.