Author Archive: Michael Foster

Here’s a critical mistake anyone can make while hunting for big dividends in a market like today’s: you can buy the right stocks at the right times—and still lose money!

2020 is a good example: even though the S&P 500 is back now positive on the year, you almost certainly suffered some degree of the following wipeout, no matter which stock you would have bought at the start of 2020:

The Headache of Going All in on Stocks

Ask anyone and they’ll likely say the market has been totally unhinged this year; bulls will say stocks shouldn’t have fallen as far as they did in March, and bears will say they shouldn’t have recovered so quickly.… Read more

This crisis has hit income-seekers—particularly retirees—hard. After the stomach-churning March selloff came the slashing of “sacred cow” dividends, like those of senior-care providers Ventas (VTR) and Welltower (WELL).

Look to Closed-End Funds for Retirement Income

It’s understandable (and healthy!) if the past few months have made you extra cautious when picking dividend stocks. The good news on the dividend front is that you can still find plenty of high, safe payouts in my favorite corner of the high-yield market: closed-end funds (CEFs).

CEFs are a great pick for retirement income today, for three reasons. First, they still give you access to large-cap stocks you know well: mainstays like Visa (V), Apple (AAPL) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) feature in many equity-CEF portfolios.… Read more

With the S&P 500 yielding just 1.8%, and 10-Year Treasuries paying a pathetic 0.7%, many folks are getting desperate for income—and they’re falling for dangerous dividends like exchange-traded notes (ETNs).

Note I said “ETN” here, and not “ETF.” It’s a critical distinction—and overlooking it could cost you a fortune in gains and dividends.

A Crippling 70% Loss

To see how dangerous ETNs can be, consider the (now defunct) UBS Etracs Monthly Pay 2x Leveraged Closed-End ETN (CEFL), which I first warned readers about in October 2017. CEFL went on to be crushed by the S&P 500 from that first warning until the start of 2020.… Read more

The way most folks invest, they’ll need way more than a million bucks to retire—in fact, they’ll need almost double that!

No wonder so many people throw up their hands and commit to working till they’re 100. Maybe you’re one of these frustrated souls. With the world in the state it’s in today, I can’t blame you.

But what if I told you that you could retire on a lot less? Like 75% less.

That’s right: a fully paid-for retirement on just a $437,500 nest egg. Save up that much and you can look forward to a steady $35,000 in dividends (which is right around the average personal income in the US) year in and year out.… Read more

It’s no secret why most people buy closed-end funds (CEFs): big dividends!

The 500 or so CEFs out there yield a game-changing 7%, on average. And with CEFs coming from all corners of the economy, you can easily build a nice, diversified CEF portfolio paying enough dividend cash to let you retire on $500,000 (or less!).

If you’re a reader of my CEF Insider service, none of this will surprise you. The service’s portfolio boasts funds yielding all the way up to 12.9%.

CEF Investors an Emotional Group

But there is one thing you should know about the CEF market: investors who buy CEFs are a bit twitchy, meaning they can sometimes oversell in a crisis.… Read more

What if I told you I could get you a steady 8.6% dividend right now with ease? And with a big slice of that income rolling your way every month, too?

The key is to invest in an often-overlooked investment called a closed-end fund (CEF). As I write this, there are about 500 CEFs in existence, and they yield around 8%, on average. Some pay more than that, such as the 5 CEFs I reveal in my free investor report, “Indestructible Income: 5 Bargain Funds With Steady 8.6% Dividends.”

With a 8.6% average payout, you’d be banking a nice $25,800 yearly income stream (or about $2,150 a month!)… Read more

Most of us know we need to stay in stocks through this crisis—but some days it’s easier said than done!

Let’s be honest: we could all use a break—a way to hedge against the nasty drops we see when we log into our trading accounts in the morning.

My first suggestion—try not to log into your account every morning! But if you insist on doing so, then my second suggestion is to take a close look at a popular hedging vehicle called a covered-call fund.

Covered-Call Funds: 6%+ Dividend With “Crash Insurance”

Covered-call funds are a kind of closed-end fund (CEF) that holds stocks but gives us an income stream we’d never see from an S&P 500 company—yields of 6% to 10% are the norm among covered-call funds.… Read more

Most folks think retiring on $527K is a dream—but most folks haven’t heard of high-yield closed end funds (CEFs). With yields as high as 22%, these unsung income plays can fast-track your race to financial independence.

Here’s how: let’s say you’re looking to clock out and use your portfolio to replace $50,000 in yearly employment income. Many financial advisors will tell you that the most you can withdraw out of a conservative stock portfolio is 4% a year (this is known as the 4% safe withdrawal rate). Simple math tells us that this means you will need $1,250,000 to retire.… Read more

Today we’re going to cut through the economic hype surrounding this crisis and jump on a little-noticed opportunity for double-digit upside and 7% dividends, too.

I’ll get into the raw numbers, and some specific tickers, shortly.

First, here’s a figure you may have read in the news: US households lost $6 trillion in the first quarter of 2020. That’s tough to get your head around: it equates to $57,551 per household.

Taken on its own, you might think it means we’re in for a long, dreary recovery. But there are a few facts we need to complete the picture.

The first: Americans didn’t go that deeply in debt to offset that loss.… Read more

One of the worst disasters to befall investors in this crisis was something called the MORL dividend.

MORL is—or rather was—the ticker for the ETRACS Monthly Pay 2XLeveraged ETN (MORL). What’s MORL? It’s a double-leveraged bank-issued note designed to track the MVIS Global Mortgage REITs Index, a market-cap-weighted global mortgage-REIT index.

A mouthful, right?

But the jargon and obscure nature of this investment didn’t stop a lot of people from buying in. The reason was simple: MORL yielded as much as 25% back in March.

Think about that for a minute: a 25% dividend. Hold MORL for just four years and you’d get your entire investment back in cash payouts without selling a single share.… Read more