Author Archive: Brett Owens

A high dividend yield can be the ultimate retirement holding. Or it can be a trap.

Today, I’m going to show you five stocks with mouth-watering yields of between 6% and 23% that are tomorrow’s dividend disasters. If you own shares in any of these firms, sell them now.

Don’t “ride these stocks down” like RadioShack shareholders did when the nearly century-old former electronics retailing giant that filed for bankruptcy protection in 2015.

RadioShack suspended its dividend in July 2012. The warning signs were there, but no one listened. Revenues had been in constant decline since their peak 16 years earlier, debts were mounting, ratings agencies were downgrading RadioShack’s bonds.… Read more

Real estate investment trusts (REITs), when picked carefully, provide generous dividends that will fund your retirement cash flow needs by themselves.

Today I’m going to show you how REITs are literally the best buy-and-hold asset you can put your money into – and I’ll introduce you to three powerful real estate plays yielding up to 7.8% annually. These three are well positioned for decades of outperformance against the rest of the investment world.

We all know that REITs are income machines. First-quarter 2017 data shows that REITs on average yielded 4.1% — more than double the average S&P 500 stock!

But many self-annointed “REIT gurus” focus too much on income and ignore REITs’ other outstanding virtue: growth potential.… Read more

Just because you’re a dividend investor doesn’t mean you’re fated to “grind out” income 3% and 4% at a time. With a slight change to your current (dare I say pedestrian?) strategy, you can keep your dividends and enjoy 81% to 437% price upside or more.

These types of life-changing returns are easily achievable within a few years. You just need to employ the ultimate contrarian dividend strategy – and buy select “born again” payouts.

The strategy is two-fold:

1. Find the stocks with rock-bottom sentiment around them, and
2. Only buy them when a cheery outlook is guaranteed.

First, Find Firms Burdened With This “Stigma”

Contrarian investing works because it capitalizes on overly-negative sentiment to find value.… Read more

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) have essentially one job to do for their investors – pay reliable dividends. Many do, but when firms find their payouts in jeopardy things get ugly in a hurry. Which is why you need to avoid, or sell, the five ticking time bombs we’re going to discuss today.

Dividend cuts don’t just “happen.” When a REIT slashes or suspends its dividend, it’s rarely a surprise – and rarely an isolated incident.

Let’s consider Armour Residential REIT (ARR) – here’s five years of dividend cuts and misery:

Sure, the current yield for Armour always looks good at 10% or higher.… 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 7.1%. 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

I wouldn’t buy any old dividend payer right now, with most stock prices on the high side. But, believe it or not, there are a few quality dividend growers that are still pretty cheap.

This time last year, we discussed four fast dividend growers selling below book value. It’s almost hard to believe now that the four-pack of banks we highlighted then were selling for as cheap as 70 cents on the dollar.

But that’s how you make money with stocks – by buying good names when nobody else wants them. And since my column last April, this group gained an average of 53%:

Easy Contrarian Gains Averaging 53%!… Read more

We hear it every single time the Federal Reserve raises rates, or even merely hints at it!

“Higher interest rates will crush dividend stocks – especially high yielders.”

Sounds scary – but it’s simply not true. And we’ll highlight five picks paying up to 9.2% that will prove just that.

Many high-yield dividend payers don’t care about the interest-rate boogeyman – and some actually outperform the market when the Fed lifts rates. Consider this research from index provider MSCI (MSCI) studying 88 years of market history up through July 2015 (emphasis mine):

“We found that, when rates were low to begin with, high-dividend stocks outperformed the market by an annualized 2.4 percentage points when rates started to go up.… Read more

Many investors think they need to choose between current income and price upside. They don’t.

In a moment, I’ll highlight five stocks paying between 8% and 10% with 40% upside to boot.

Let’s face it – growth matters. It’s the best way to retire on a nest egg of just $500,000:

How to Stretch Your Investment on $500,000

The table above assumes a nest egg of half a million dollars that yields 8% a year, and absolutely no dividend reinvestment – here, you’re putting every cent of income into your pocket. Look how much that $500,000 expands over just a few years as you’re able to achieve more capital gains out of it.… Read more

A $1 trillion infrastructure proposal is officially on the way later this year. Should we income investors buy any stocks now?

The answer’s yes – provided we avoid the popular names. After all, would you want to place your retirement hopes on the next spin of this roulette wheel?

Spin the Wheel on Retirement?

Caterpillar (CAT) is an industrial name you’ll hear mentioned often by stock pundits in the coming months. It’s a “cyclical” company that may indeed benefit from Trump’s trillion. But CAT buyers are taking on a lot of price heartburn for a modest 3.3% dividend.

And some popular picks pay even less.… Read more