Author Archive: Brett Owens

Don’t be cheap when you buy bonds this holiday season (or ever, for that matter). Bargain shoppers, sadly, tend to be the most at-risk of outliving their fixed income portfolios!

But it’s easy for you and me to double up “regular” bond returns simply by swapping out popularity for quality.

Let’s walk through some of the most popular fixed-income plays today – and replace each with something that yields more (with superior price upside to boot).

The obsession with fees is understandable. Most investors are conditioned by their experience with stock-based mutual funds and ETFs to search out the lowest fees, almost to a fault.… Read more

Today I’m going to reveal my personal strategy for outperforming the market over the long haul.

It’s simple. All you have to do is buy dividend stocks—but not in the way most people think.

I’ll also name 4 terrific dividend growers you can buy now and safely tuck away in your retirement portfolio forever. More on those in a moment. First, we need to talk about…

The Wrong Way to Buy Dividend Stocks

When picking stocks for the long haul, many folks put too much emphasis on the current dividend yield.

Trouble is, the high yielders that could really make a difference to your retirement—I’m talking payouts of 6%, 8% and up—are getting scarce as the S&P 500 grinds upward:

Few Trophies for Dividend Hunters

Worse, a high yield can easily lead you onto the rocks, something many people learned the hard way with telecom operator Frontier Communications (FTR).… Read more

Everybody likes a sale, but there’s a significant difference between something that’s a value, and something that’s merely cheap – a good value can last you years and even decades, where something cheap can leave you in the lurch within a few months.

The same can be said for several enticing double-digit yields right now. I’m about to introduce you to five 10%-yielding dividend stocks, all of which boast low prices in the single digits. But that doesn’t make them all good deals.

Far from it.

We all know that nominal share price typically doesn’t mean much – what makes a stock “cheap” is its price compared to metrics such as earnings, sales, free cash flow and other operational measures.… Read more

Who’s cooking Thanksgiving dinner for you tomorrow?

Specifically, I want to know if your family is doing the cooking – or if you’re outsourcing the meal prep to a robot.

If it sounds like a silly question, well, let’s frame it with respect to our usual beat – generating safe 7% and 8% yields in your retirement portfolio. Would you blindly buy and sell dividend payers based on the “insights” of a computer?

I often hear from readers who catch a “robo rating” on one of our holdings and worry. Even when the analysis is mere inches deep, like this one:

(Your stock) appears to be not be meeting its earnings expectations for past 6 quarters, the profitability of the company is poor which affects its valuation, and its ability to maintain its dividend.… Read more

Let’s dive into the General Electric (GE) dividend massacre that sent the market reeling last week. When the dust settled, the payout took a 50% haircut, and the stock had plunged about 11%.

Before I go on, I should tell you that GE isn’t the only household name I’m worried about. Further on, I’ll show you another investor “sacred cow” that’s showing some eerily similar signs. Then we’ll look at an unloved pharma play that’s more than worth your attention now.

First, let’s pick through the GE wreckage and see what we can learn, and where the stock could go from here.… Read more

Whenever a pundit says they’re going to show you some high-yield dividend picks, we all know what’s coming. Telecoms like Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T). Maybe a utility or two, like Southern Company (SO). Sure, they’re big, they’re safe … but even when they’re down, they’re still wildly crowded trades.

So let’s explore five dividend stocks with bulletproof yields up to 9.3%. Their payouts are high because their stock prices are low – thanks to these firms’ undercover status.

I love “hidden” dividends so much that I’ve dedicated one of my premium services – Hidden Yields – to them.… Read more

There’s been a mini-wave of insider buying in the BDC (business development company) sector. This is worthy of our attention for two reasons:

1. These firms pay fat yields (we’ll discuss 3 paying up to 13%),
2. Their stocks are trading below book value.

This means we can buy these firms for as low as 71 on the dollar and get their dividend streams (and future cash flows) for free. (Remember when I told you to buy four big bank stocks when they were trading below book? If you followed my advice 18 months ago, you made a lot of money).

We’ll analyze each of these “pennies on the dollar” BDCs in a minute.… Read more

We were inching forward on a busy road in suburban Boston. I looked out our window and asked my friend how much of the retail strip to our right he’d short (if he could).

Joey works for a real estate hedge fund in New York, by the way.

“All of it,” he replied without hesitation.

He paused.

“Sell it all.”

I nodded in agreement. Death by Amazon before our very eyes!

Now you and I don’t normally chat about brick and mortar stores because, quite frankly, who cares about retail stocks. They don’t pay big dividends unless they’re in big trouble, like Macy’s (M) (and its 7.6% mirage yield) right now.… Read more

Technology changes so fast these days that firms in the sector can see their profits quickly vanish.

Sadly, their dividends can disappear just as quickly!

Recently, we’ve seen companies such as Windstream (WIN), Frontier Communications (FTR) and Allegheny Technologies (ATI) cut or outright drop their dividends, with sky-high yields suddenly evaporating, leaving retirement investors in the lurch.

More pain could be on the way. A trio of tempting tech-stock yields, including two double-digit payouts, look destined for failure.

These stocks might seem like a shoo-in as contrarian investing targets. By simply buying over-punished stocks and waiting for a reversion back to a positive mean – think the “Dogs of the Dow” – investors could collect twofold on both the recovery and the elevated dividends.… Read more

Stocks that raise their dividend meaningfully every year will make you a lot of money over the long haul… provided they continue to boost their payouts, of course.

Studies by two global investment heavyweights, BlackRock and GMO, have shown that 90% of U.S. equity returns over the past 100 years have been thanks to dividends and dividend growth.

Ned Davis Research also conducted its own 43-year study on stock returns. The conclusion? Dividend payers are good… but dividend growers are great. Stocks that paid a growing dividend delivered double-digit returns and outpaced steady dividend payers by nearly one-third:

Annual Rate of Return (Ned Davis Research)

Over time, this compounding really adds up as these stocks pull away from stagnant payers and the market at-large:

Dividend Growers Pull Away Over Time

Worried about the Fed’s rate cycle?… Read more