Author Archive: Michael Foster

Are you worried you’ll make the wrong call in this gyrating market? It’s a reasonable fear, with the Dow heading up 200 points one day and down 600 the next—and dark trade-war headlines piling up daily.

But sitting in cash is even more dangerous! Because your stuffed mattress is at the whim of inflation—and that slow cash drain leaves you at a real risk of outliving your money in retirement!

So today I’m going to share where my models see this market heading. Plus I’ll reveal one weird fund that sets you up for double-digit upside and a huge 7.1% dividend, too.… Read more

Today I’m going to show you nothing less than a “dividend unicorn”: a closed-end fund (CEF) yielding 8.8% that’s raised its payout 24% in just the last six months. (And yes, it’s primed for many more hikes, too.)

Get this: because of the weirdness of the CEF market, this cash machine is still cheap today—trading at 13% off its “retail” price!

Let’s dive in.

I’m talking about the PGIM High Yield Bond Fund (ISD). It’s a smaller CEF (with just $552 million in assets). That small size helps set up our chance to buy cheap—and I’ll say more about why this deal exists in just a moment.… Read more

Forget the trade war noise. Here’s the only thing you need to know: if you’d bulked up your stock holdings on any of the dips we’ve seen in the last four years, you’d be a lot richer today.

Buying the Dip Amplifies a 65% Gain

The reason for the market’s “one step back, two steps ahead” pattern is simple: despite the interest rate- and trade-driven terror, corporate profits and sales are rising (as are workers’ wages), and unemployment is low.

In other words, the US economy is solid—and it’s stayed solid through every short-term crisis of the last few years. So now we have another pullback that’s given us another chance to amplify our upside.… Read more

If you’re like most folks, you likely at least take a second look when you run into a big dividend yield, like, say, 14%.

Think about that for a second: drop, say, $100K into a fund like that and just seven years later, you’d have collected enough in dividends to recoup your entire initial stake.

Everything else is gravy!

But when we come across a dividend that big, we need to do a second-level analysis to make sure it’s sustainable. And that brings me to the closed-end fund (CEF) I want to tell you about today—it gives us that 14% yield but misses the mark on just about every factor you could imagine, giving us:

• Impossibly high management fees
• A portfolio that underperforms the market
• An overpriced valuation, and …
• Its profits are falling short of payouts.

The most reliable recession indicator in the world just flashed red—and it’s actually setting us up for 33%+ gains in the next two years.

A contradiction? Sure sounds like it.

But history tells us we can expect a fast return like this when the economy and stock market look exactly like they do right now.

I’ve got two ways for you to grab a piece of the action, one of which even hands us a growing 7% cash dividend.

And when I say “growing,” I mean it: this already-huge cash stream has grown 96% in the last 15 years, and it’s backed by the strongest stocks in America (I’m talking about the 30 names on the Dow Jones Industrial Average), so there’s plenty more to come.… Read more

The PGIM High Yield Bond Fund (ISD) trades at a huge discount that’s going to disappear soon.

Before I explain why, let me tell you something else about this fund: it boasts a huge 8.4% dividend yield. In other words, you’d get $700 per month—or $8,400 a year—in income on every $100,000 invested. And you should consider getting in now, because ISD is set to soar.

A New Fund

For years, ISD provided a solid and reliable return, thanks to its strategy. The fund would buy corporate bonds that expired in just a couple years (or less), so there was less risk of any company going bankrupt or defaulting.… Read more

What if there was a way you could tap this market correction to grab the biggest S&P 500 stocks cheap—all while hedging your downside and getting a 7.2% dividend yield?

It’s not only possible, but you can do it in one single buy. More on that in a moment.

First, I’m pounding the table on stocks—and in particular funds like the one I’ll show you shortly—for one reason: there’s a huge disconnect between the drop in the market that we’ve seen lately …

Investors Miss the Memo

… and what S&P 500 companies are telling us.

And that is that far more firms than expected are crushing the Street’s forecasts.… Read more

Volatility is back! With the market whipsawing again, you’re likely seeing more red in your portfolio these days.

At times like this, you might be tempted to give in to emotion and sell. That’s understandable—self-preservation is, after all, our most powerful instinct.

But keep your nerve. Because now is the time for contrarians like us to get greedy for yield—and upside.

Here’s why: American companies’ earnings are strong, their revenues are rising, and there are no indications of a recession anytime soon.

I’ll go through these points one by one, because it’s important to see how the data disagrees with the panicky noise the media publishes these days.… Read more

Municipal bonds are the perfect play for this trade-war obsessed market—they’re far more stable than your typical stock and they pay bigger dividends, too.

And today I’m going to show you how to tap the very best “munis” for a 4.3% average dividend yield.

That’s just the start.

One of the three “steady Eddie” buys I’ll show you below even pays an outsized 4.7% dividend. Plus, it trades at a discount to its “true” value, adding to its already legendary stability and setting us up for some nice gains, too.

Turning a 4% Yield Into 5.8%

Here’s something that’s often overlooked about muni bonds: their payouts are tax-free to most Americans.… Read more

I run into a lot of investors who think retirement investing is a two-act play.

In Act 1, when you’re younger, you try to balloon your nest egg with high-risk growth stocks that pay little (and often no) dividends.

Then, in Act 2, as you near—and enter—retirement, you pivot to the big dividends you need to pay your bills.

Trouble is, this approach exposes you to far too much risk, so today I’m going to show you a better way.

Your Best Play: Big Dividends and Growth—Right Now

I’m talking about 10 funds that can hand you dividends up to 9.8% right now, plus annual returns of 10% or more.… Read more