5 Covered Writes: Priceline Our Top Choice

By Sol Palha: "Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft." Winston Churchill

By Sol Palha: "Patience is being friends with time." Vanna Bonta

By Sol Palha: "Too humble is half proud." Yiddish Proverb

By Sol Palha: "The wise does at once what the fool does at last."-- Baltasar Gracian Our play of choice is Sohu.Com Inc (SOHU) and we like it for the following reasons:

By Sol Palha:In the learning to fish series, we provide investors with suggested guidelines for choosing a potential candidate and one candidate is selected as our play of choice. We provide reasons for this choice and in doing so hope to impart some understanding to those who are new to the field of dividend investing. A lot of ratios will be used throughout this article, and it would be best for investors to get a handle on some of these ratios as they could prove to be very useful to the selection process.

By Sol Palha:Investors should never base their decision on yield alone as there are many stocks that offer extremely high yields but with dismal performance. In some cases even with the high yield the total rate of return has been negative for the past 3-5 years. In terms of stocks that pay out dividends one should look at the strength of the company, the dividend growth rate, the sustainability of the dividend and the company's dividend history.

By Sol Palha:Investors should generally seek stocks where net income, cash flow, annual EPS before NRI and sales are trending upwards for the past three years. In addition, investors would do well to seek out stocks with good interest coverage ratios, low payout ratios and positive levered free cash flows.

By Sol Palha:Investors should never base their decision on yield alone as there are many stocks that offer extremely high yields but with dismal performance. In some cases even with the high yield the total rate of return has been negative for the past 3-5 years. In terms of stocks that pay out dividends one should look at the strength of the company, the dividend growth rate, the sustainability of the dividend and the company's dividend history.