Author Archive: Michael Foster

There’s one very simple mistake millions of folks are making right now—and it’s costing them billions every year.

Of course, there are many boneheaded errors people make every day, like betting a lot of cash on a single stock. Or not having an investment plan.

While both of those will also drain your portfolio—and could even put your retirement on the rocks—neither is the most common pitfall you’ll find.

So what is?

Simple. Being scared.

That may sound strange, but hear me out.

Because fearful investors avoid risk, but they don’t realize that all investing involves risk. You might think putting your money in U.S.… Read more

Today we’re going to dive into 3 blue chip names your friends are probably dodging like a co-worker with a bad cold right now.

That’s too bad, because they’re making a big mistake.

Because even though they’ve gapped way higher in 2017, these 3 stout picks are just getting started. So if they’ve been taking up space on your watch list (and you’re far from alone if they have), now’s the time to make your move!

And that goes double if you’re investing for the long haul. Say 10 years or more.

I’ll share their names in a second. First, let’s dive into precisely why these 3 American icons are fueling up for their next jump higher.… Read more

If you’re worried that you’ll struggle to profit from stocks for the next few years, you shouldn’t. There are still plenty of outsized gains waiting to be had—and today I’m going to show you exactly how to get in on the action.

First, we need to talk about what’s making stocks harder to invest in these days. It boils down to two points:

1. Valuations are high.
2. Interest rates are rising.

When stock valuations rise too far, they inevitably come back to earth. The S&P 500 is now trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of almost 25—the highest level in a generation except for two other times: 2000 and 2007.… Read more

There’s a secret way to make a killing in the stock market, and one superstar investor is jumping in with over $1 billion.

You may not have heard of Boaz Weinstein, but he’s become a legend on Wall Street. Back in 2012, he made a ton of money betting against J.P. Morgan’s London Whale—whose name is now linked with risky, poor investments.

Seeing the London Whale’s ridiculous trading strategies, Weinstein bet aggressively against the Whale—and won big. J.P. Morgan lost $2 billion because of this one trader, causing the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, to admit that the firm had lost the money due to “egregious mistakes” in trading.… Read more

Today I’m going to show you three funds that are clobbering the market while throwing off a princely income stream.

These three funds have all gained 30% so far in 2017, even though the market is up a more modest (but still solid) 10%. And thanks to their skilled management teams and the exploding corners of the market they play in, they still have plenty of room to run.

The best part: between them, they pay an average 6.5% dividend! And thanks to their strong outperformance, those payouts are going to keep flowing to shareholders.

So you could buy all three of these funds, get a huge passive income stream now and position yourself for strong capital gains, thanks to the steady growth in these funds’ net asset values (or the value of their underlying holdings).… Read more

If you invest outside the US, you’re probably pretty happy with 2017 so far.

Heck, even if you’ve stayed inside America’s borders, you’re looking a nice 10% return through the first 7 months, going by the performance of the S&P 500.

(And speaking of the US, my colleague Brett Owens recently revealed 4 great all-American stocks yielding up to 10%. You can get their names by clicking here.)

But those who play in the global sandbox have seen some truly spectacular returns, especially folks who hold closed-end funds that invest in foreign stocks. In fact, the CEF Insider Foreign Sub-Index is up a whopping 20.1% since the start of the year—and it isn’t slowing down.… Read more

If you’ve been on the sidelines as this market grinds higher, you’re probably suffering a severe case of FOMO (fear of missing out).

It’s a terrible feeling, but today I’m going to cure you of it entirely, because it’s not too late to jump in!

The key is to zero in on a group of investments known as closed-end funds.

I’ll tell you about them—and introduce you to 5 attractive CEFs—in a moment. But for now, here’s the upshot: these overlooked, easy-to-buy funds are beating the market, but some are still priced at big discounts to their “true” value.

That means you’re not only going to get a strong return here, but you’ll also get a lot of income, too.… Read more

When a clock is broken, it’s right twice a day. But when a permabear warns a stock market crash is coming “any day now,” how many times can they be right?

Well, if you’ve been waiting for a crash since the last one, you’ve been waiting for almost a decade. And that just empowers the bears to say it’s inevitable—it’s been so long since the last crash, surely another one is coming soon, right?

Wrong.

Here are three reasons why the stock market is set to keep going up.

1) Earnings Growth Is Strong

In the first quarter, analysts predicted 9% earnings growth for S&P 500 companies, and that helped the benchmark SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VOO) rise over 8% in the first half of 2017.… 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 six funds. When we’re done, we’ll end up with a simple, diversified portfolio that throws off a nice, steady 7.9% dividend yield!

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 six 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

Something tragic happened at the start of this month—but it’s such a familiar tragedy that no one should have been surprised.

If you held the PIMCO CA Municipal Income III Fund (PZC), however, I bet you were surprised—and now you might be panicking. A closed-end fund (CEF) that was soaring for months all of a sudden crashed, going from being up 12% year-to-date to down 2.8%:

Look Out Below

Until July 3, PZC was one of the best-performing municipal-bond funds in the world. While the CEF Insider Tax-Free Bond Index was up 6.1%, PZC had nearly doubled it, gaining a stunning 11.6%.… Read more