Author Archive: Michael Foster

One thing investors ask me about all the time is return of capital, or ROC.

In a nutshell, these folks are mainly worried that ROC is simply a fund taking your money and paying you a dividend from your money without actually making a positive return on it.

Worse, they’re doing this after taking out their fees, which are much higher than the fees you’d pay on an index fund!

Before you get your pitchfork out, know that this perception of ROC is wrong. In reality, return of capital is often very good for investors.

For starters, ROC isn’t simply a fund taking your money and giving it back to you.… Read more

Any way you slice it, it was a big bet.

I’m talking about the legendary wager Warren Buffett made with hedge fund manager Ted Siedes a decade ago.

You may recall this $500,000 gamble. It went like this: if hedge funds could beat the S&P 500 over a decade, Siedes would win. If not, Buffett would win.

The result: the index crushed the funds Siedes chose, prompting him to concede defeat last May.

He went down fighting, though, writing that it was the hedge funds’ global focus that caused them to underperform, not the prevailing “wisdom” that stock picking is little more than gambling.… Read more

There’s a terrific buying opportunity taking shape in the municipal-bond market. Almost no one sees it coming, and you can thank a familiar friend for it.

I’m talking about the Fed—specifically Janet Yellen’s irresistible urge to hike interest rates in December, low inflation be damned.

She recently made that intention crystal clear, and futures markets responded by baking it in, with rate-hike odds leaping from a 30% chance to 76.4%:

Final Notice: A Christmas Rate Hike Is Coming

Stocks, for their part, have proven resilient, though there are still bargains to be had despite the market’s climb this year.

But there’s another place where you’ll find even better bargains if you’re patient.… Read more

If you’re a dividend fan and you spot an 18% yield, you’re going to sit up and take notice.

But your radar will also probably go up for another reason: you know outsized payouts like that pretty much always come with outsized risk too.

Which brings me to the weird funds I’m going to show you today.

Their 18% average yield masks something shocking: they’re not only dangerous but they’re not even income investments! They’re something else entirely—and if you fail to pick up on that and buy, they could blow a hole in your retirement portfolio.

Let me explain, starting with…

Where We Found These 18% Payouts

The funds I’m talking about are called exchange-traded notes (ETNs), a close cousin of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), another asset class I recommended staying clear of in a September 12 article.… Read more

It’s one of the first questions readers usually ask me:

“Don’t closed-end funds’ high dividend yields make them dangerous?”

It’s a good question, with CEFs offering yields of 8% or more. It’s also a general (but far from certain, as I’ll explain shortly) rule that higher yields bring a higher risk of a dividend cut.

Take Frontier Communications (FTR), a stock my colleague Brett Owens sounded the alarm on in April.

The telecom provider was yielding a whopping 16% before it slashed its dividend in June 2017. The stock plunged when the cut was announced:

Slashed Dividend, Slashed Share Price

FTR is yielding a whopping 20% now, thanks to its collapse in price (because you calculate yield by dividing the annual dividend rate into the current share price).… Read more

You’ve probably heard the “wisdom” on mutual funds a million times.

It goes like this: mutual funds collect high fees and most still fail to beat the market, so why bother when you can buy a low-cost index fund, like the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) or the Vanguard 500 ETF (VOO), and tag along with the market’s performance?

To be fair, it hasn’t been a bad strategy. Look at the total return those funds have posted over the last five years:

Indexing Has Paid Off—But We Can Do Better

Nearly doubling your money in half a decade is nice—but does that really mean mutual funds are ready for the dustbin of history?… Read more

I hear it from readers all the time: closed-end fund fees are just too high!

And when you can get a passive fund that simply tracks the S&P 500, like the Vanguard 500 ETF (VOO), for a microscopic 0.05% expense ratio, it can seem silly to pay over 2% for a closed-end fund.

(If you’re unfamiliar with CEFs, click here to learn more about them—and why you need to hold at least a few of these high-yield investments in your retirement portfolio.)

My answer is that you need to look closely at total returns, keeping in mind that CEFs report returns after fees.… Read more

The financial media is churning out doom-and-gloom stories 24/7—and that’s keeping many folks on the sidelines when they should be buying.

Sure, you could say that about almost any period in history, but it’s especially true in 2017, when stocks have done this:

A Steady Ride Up

Consider this chart for a moment. This gain came during the Russia scandal, the North Korea nuclear threat and environmental and humanitarian disasters caused by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

Can you see any of those events in the chart above?

I can’t.

In reality, stocks aren’t political and they’re not emotional. The truth is, they only go up and down if a major news story also has a major financial impact.… Read more

If you’ve been reading my CEF Insider service or my weekly articles on Contrarian Outlook, you know I don’t go near a closed-end fund unless it hands us two things:

1. A fat, sustainable dividend
2. A big discount to net asset value (NAV, or the value of its underlying assets)

Today I’m going to show you 4 CEFs that give us these two things in spades, with safe dividend yields up to 8.2% and ridiculous discounts either at or near double digits! (If you’re unfamiliar with CEFs, click here for a quick overview of these exciting high-yield investments).

So if you’re looking to bag solid dividends up to 8.2% at a nice discount (and who isn’t?),… Read more

Fee-obsessed investors continue to pile into exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Don’t follow them.

Because there’s another—much less popular—group of funds that will hand you much better returns (and double the dividend payouts). And swapping your ETFs for them is easy.

I’m talking about closed-end funds (CEFs). (If you’re not familiar with CEFs, click here to check out a primer I recently wrote on them.)

Now even though I just said CEFs are less popular than ETFs, that doesn’t mean they’re totally ignored. The truth is, they’re getting more attention from investors of late, for reasons I’ll dive into in just a moment.… Read more