If you’re hearing the “market panic, buy dividend-paying stalwarts” advice that seems to be coming from all corners of the investment world, and if that advice rings true to you, there’s really only one thing I’d tell you: Buy DTN. That’s the WisdomTree dividend ETF that excludes financial stocks (most dividend ETFs are heavily into financials and finance-like companies like REITs), it is weighted by dividend performance and yields a bit over 3% and is likely, I think, to outperform the broad S&P Index over the next few years, since I believe long-term investors are going to see most of their performance come in the form of dividends for several years going forward.

But if you like to dabble in individual stocks and look for interesting opportunities, let’s dig a little deeper into the LNG tanker companies — I think this business is likely to be huge a decade from now, and the capacity isn’t there yet so those who are in early, if they manage it right, stand to reap some substantial profits while the fleet size catches up with likely demand.

If that turns you right off (and I wouldn’t blame you, shipping is a notoriously boom-and-bust business), I’ll tell you that the other stocks I was considering for this month’s “idea of the month” focus are in the private space arena — stocks that have been beaten down a bit in part because of fear of government cutbacks, but that I think look fairly attractive in light of broad trends (more contracting in NASA, more private satellites, more need for geospatial data and imagery from both government and business). My favorites are Orbital Sciences (ORB), the midsize rocket company, and the two big satellite imaging companies, GeoEye (GEOY) and DigitalGlobe (DGI), in that order, but they didn’t quite make the cut just yet (in part because they don’t pay dividends, though that’s not the only consideration).

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that Sprott Resource Lending has now become a decent dividend payer as well — this was our Idea of the Month back in February, and they just announced earnings and the start of their dividend. The dividend begins at a yield of under 3%, as expected (one cent per share, per quarter), but I also expect it to grow quite quickly. They also, for what it’s worth, said that ...