Author Archive: Michael Foster

A lot more investors have been emailing me lately, fearful of a market downturn. This tells me one thing: today’s market is a scared market.

But you don’t need to be scared. In fact, thanks to overhyped investor fears, you can easily lock in 7% dividends and prepare yourself for a downturn with less risk than you’d get buying stocks directly.

The key? The 5 unloved (for now) funds I’ll show you in a moment. First, though, you might be wondering why I say these funds are less risky than individual stocks.

For one, each of these 5 hold hundreds of assets, spreading your cash out in a way that a basket of a few stocks can’t.… Read more

Something strange is happening in the investment-bank and hedge-fund world: a growing sense that the next recession (which, by the way, Wall Street has long been wrongly predicting for years) finally has a due date: 2020.

The number of Wall Street firms predicting this date is staggering.

Bloomberg’s Joe Wisenthal has collected a few predictions, such as one from Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, who said 2020 will be the economic “inflection point,” and Société Générale’s economic team, who said the likelihood of a 2020 recession has risen due to, among other things, a tight labor market and higher borrowing costs.… Read more

Today I’m going to show you a “1 click” way to buy real estate and squeeze an 8% income from it year in and year out.

So if you drop $300k into this investment—the price of the average American home—you’ll instantly trigger a $24,000 yearly income stream.

And no, we’re not going to parade through open house after open house to do it. We’ll buy in right from the comfort of our brokerage accounts!

Best of all, we can be assured that our “properties” will be in the hottest neighborhoods, setting us up for fast price gains, too.

Zero Deadbeat Tenants, Zero Hidden Costs

If you already own rental property, I don’t have to tell you that it’s far from a passive investment.… Read more

The third quarter is ending soon, so we need to talk about earnings—and especially how this soaring market can hand us a fat 10% cash dividend (and upside), starting today.

Earnings have been an obsession of mine this year, because a lot of investors are ignoring terrific news. If you follow them, you can easily miss out on big profits.

For instance, remember when trade-war threats and tensions with North Korea did this to the S&P 500?

First-Level Investors Took a Hit …

Anyone reading the headlines who panicked and sold into this mini-correction lost a lot of money—in total, billions of dollars of wealth disappeared in a matter of days.… Read more

Remember seven months ago, when investors were freaking out over North Korea and a future trade war?

They were also wringing their hands over popular volatility funds like the VelocityShares Daily Inverse VIX (XIV), which blew up in February and destroyed millions of dollars of invested cash.

All of these shocks sent the S&P 500 tumbling over 10% in a matter of days!

But if you sold off then, you missed out on huge profits:

The High Cost of Giving in to Fear

This chart makes it pretty clear that dumping stocks on scary headlines is a terrible idea. But that doesn’t stop a lot of investors from making this same mistake over and over.… Read more

It’s a question I get from investors all the time (including subscribers to my CEF Insider service): how should I invest when interest rates rise?

Because fear of rising rates is common among investors, there’s a hidden trap here: if you react to this worry, you will lose money. Instead, you need a second-level understanding of rates so you can bet against this fear and make money. (I’ll also give you 3 great buys that let you quickly and easily pull this off below.)

What Most People Get Wrong About Rising Rates

Here’s the common thinking on rates: as they head up, rising yields on US Treasuries will make these investments more attractive than large-cap US dividend stocks.… Read more

We’ve seen a lot of volatility and fear in 2018, and that’s handed us a great buying opportunity—particularly in the 5 unloved funds I’ll show you below.

Make no mistake: each of these 5 despised funds is poised for serious upside before 2018 is out … and they’ll pay us 8.2% average dividends, to boot. That’s enough to hand you $3,400 a month on a $500k nest egg! Before we get to them, let’s take a look back at the year so far and see what’s handed us this terrific opportunity.

History Is Set to Repeat

If you bought closed-end funds (CEFs) back in early March, when the market tanked and I urged investors to buy, you’d be enjoying a nice double-digit total return in just 6 months:

Hated CEFs Turn the Corner

Why did these 3 funds—the Reaves Utility Income Fund (UTG), the Cohen & Steers Infrastructure Fund (UTF) and the DNP Select Income Fund (DNP)—all of which I recommended back on March 1—soar?… Read more

Readers often ask me how to build a portfolio that holds its own in down times but hands them more income than the measly 2.6% long-term US Treasuries pay.

So today I’ll show you how to do that. With the 4 bargain-priced closed-end funds (CEFs) I’ll show you below, which also boast strong track records and high income streams, you can keep the dividends flowing, regardless of the market’s tantrums.

An added plus? Your nest egg will be spread across asset classes, giving you extra protection.

Buy No. 1: A Buffett-Friendly CEF With Big Upside

With a long-term average total return of around 8.5% per year, US stocks need to be at the heart of any income portfolio.… Read more

Today I’m going to show you how to get a livable income stream from a $300,000 nest egg—while growing your savings at the same time.

Sounds impossible, right?

Wrong.

What’s more, we’re going to pull it off using just 6 funds. When we’re done, we’ll end up with a simple, diversified portfolio that throws off a nice, steady 7.9% dividend yield—more than 4 times the S&P 500 average!

And if you’re worried that this outsized yield could come at the cost of a weak total return, don’t be, because these funds have delivered 12% per year over the past decade.

Before I get into these 6 funds, let me show you what numbers like these can mean for you: if we start with an upfront investment of $305,000 in this portfolio and leave it alone for 10 years, we can expect our capital to explode to nearly $1 million in a decade.… Read more

We’re always looking for reader feedback at my CEF Insider service, so we recently sent out a survey to our members (if you are one, you likely got it) asking for the topics they’d most like to see us cover.

One of the most common answers: how to know when it’s time to sell a closed-end fund (CEF).

So now I want to tackle that question (with more articles to come in the next few weeks answering other questions from our survey).

Sell Signs Not Always Easy to Spot

First off, it’s easier to know when to buy than when to sell.… Read more