Author Archive: Brett Owens

The desperate hunt for yield is getting way out of hand—and it’s setting up a terrific buying opportunity for you and me.

How out of hand?

Consider that some investors are so income starved they’re piling into sovereign bonds from Iraq—a country that’s still a war zone!

The latest issuance of five-year bonds by the Iraqi government was slated for $1 billion. But investors spied the 7% yield on offer here and crashed the doors, racking up nearly $7 billion in orders.

It’s sad, and totally unnecessary.

A Secure Portfolio With a Life-Changing 8% Yield

The worst thing is, in their scramble for income, the herd is charging right past yields that are even bigger—and far safer—here in the U.S.A.,… Read more

Don’t take any stated yields for granted these days! The financial news has been flooded with dividend cuts lately, with Teva Pharmaceutical (TEVA) and Mattel (MAT) taking the hatchet to their payouts, and telecom Windstream (WIN) dropping its dividend too.

It’s dangerous to buy headline yields – or even supposedly “safe” blue chips with more modest dividends – without looking at the profits funding these payouts. Companies with high payout ratios (how much in earnings, funds from operations and other measures a company pays out in the form of dividends) are a twofold risk:

1. High payout ratios can lead to a slowing in dividend growth, which means your payout is increasingly likely to fall behind inflation.

Don’t take any dividends for granted today. Business disruption is accelerating as entire industries are being eaten alive.

Uber and Lyft? Killed cabs.

Amazon (AMZN)? It’s crushing retail, and starving their REIT landlords right before our very eyes.

And soon, they might team up to offer more same day deliveries – and make more rivals obsolete!

These types of disturbances have added a new layer to contrarian investing. Before, it was as simple as buying stocks when they were out-of-favor and holding them until they became back in vogue. The “Dogs of the Dow” strategy, for example, usually beat the market by banking the highest blue chip dividend yields – a sign that the tide was ready to turn back in the dogs favor.… Read more

Last week, I gave you a peek under the hood of my “8% No-Withdrawal Retirement Portfolio.” I also showed you a ridiculously cheap fund with a 9% dividend yield you can get in on now.

Today I’ll reveal another off-the-radar investment that forms the second pillar of this “crash-proof” portfolio.

I’ll also name a popular dividend ETF boasting a tempting 4.5% yield. That may sound great … but it’s actually a trap waiting to spring!

More on that in a moment.

First, the sector I’m going to draw your attention to is a corner of the market you must be in if you want to get the safe 8%+ dividend yields you’ll need to retire on dividends alone.… Read more

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) offer “one-click” diversification. Investors buy ETFs to hedge against individual stock collapses.

ETFs can also offer big yields. We’ll look at 11 of them today, with dividends starting at 4% and climbing all the way up to an amazing 21%!

Is the 21%er a trap? Of course it is. But my favorite double-digit payer isn’t – in fact, its 10% payout is secure and spectacular. But this “last safe 10% yield” won’t last long – they never do!

So read on to learn about my best income buy as we round out today’s diversified dividend dozen.

Guggenheim Shipping ETF (SEA)
Dividend Yield: 4%

The Guggenheim Shipping ETF (SEA) invests in a bundle of companies with shipping operations across the world.… Read more

You may think $500,000 isn’t enough money to retire on.

It is. Because with two quick steps, you can transform any $500K “buy and hope” portfolio into a $3,279 monthly income stream:

1. First, sell everything. Including the 2%, 3% and even 4% payers that simply don’t yield enough to really matter. Then,
2. Buy my 8 favorite monthly dividend payers.

The result? $3,279.69 in monthly income every month (from an average 7.6% annual yield, paid every 30 days).

With upside on your initial $500,000 to boot!

Traditional dividend stocks simply can’t keep up, and I’ll show you why. Let’s take a 4-pack of popular names Procter & Gamble (PG), McDonald’s (MCD), Altria (MO), and General Mills (GIS) to illustrate how much they’ll pay investors the rest of the year.… Read more

This levitating stock market is terrible news for anyone who wants to actually retire. That’s because it’s keeping S&P 500 dividend yields in the dumpster, at a hair under 1.9% now.

But there’s a better way—an 8% retirement-survival strategy, to be specific—that’ll earn you $40,000 annually on a $500,000 portfolio. With capital gains upside, to boot.

You read that right.

Most “first-level” investors have no clue the investments I’m going to tell you about even exist. That’s why most folks pile into blue chips, wrongly thinking they’re the ones at fault for not having saved the massive nest egg they need to get a livable income stream.… Read more

If you hold any of these five risky REITs, you should sell them immediately. And put that money into two recession-proof bargains (paying up to 8%) that we’ll discuss shortly.

REITs aren’t always as safe as their dividends appear on paper. Consider Investors Real Estate Trust (IRET), which slashed its dividend by nearly half late last year. This wasn’t a sudden decision – it followed years of share declines as falling oil prices crushed rents across IRET’s markets.

IRET has now lost 40% in four years and seen its high-single-digit yield reduced to less than 5%. Even IRET’s brief recovery after the dividend cut has withered away, and shares are off double digits in 2017.… Read more

Worried about a pullback? I don’t blame you. But you shouldn’t stash your portfolio in cash when you can bank this 10% dividend and be protect yourself from a drop in the stock market.

Rather than buying stocks for their payouts and hoping they don’t crash, you can extract more money from them – and protect your downside risk – by “writing” covered calls. And don’t worry, we’re not going to get into an Options 101 course here.

I’m going to explain the strategy to you – and then recommend my favorite fund which is easy to buy, and will do all of the heavy lifting for you.… Read more