Dividend.com: Step Aside as Exxon Drops

The interesting news is the revelation that because of the company's sharp drop in share price, two family partnerships affiliated with Chairman, President and Chief Executive Terry Considine sold common stock pledged to secure margin debt. Roughly 600,000 shares have been involuntarily sold to date. The company noted that Considine holds less than 1% interest overall in the partnerships.

We removed the stock from our "recommended" list back on Aug. 25, when shares were trading at $34.65. The dividend news seems like a positive, but we feel investors should wait a bit to make sure the market sees it that way as well.

Apartment Investment & Management is not recommended at this time, holding a Dividend.com rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars.

Chevron Indicates It Can Beat Last Quarter's Numbers

Oil titan Chevron(CVX Quote) says it expects third-quarter results to surpass those of the second quarter, as a result of improvements at its "downstream" (refining and marketing) operations.

The company is cautioning that some of the profits will be offset in part by declining earnings in its "upstream" (exploration and production) business. The company blames this decline on the effects of the September hurricanes.

We had removed shares of Chevron back on Aug. 1, when shares were trading at the $84.01 level. We felt the risk/reward was becoming unfavorable, and we believed that oil was looking like it had reached an exhaustive top. We believe CVX's valuation is getting much more attractive, but we'd like to see oil prices find some sort of foundation before a bottom forms in this name.