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Most stocks that pay meaningful yields today do so because their stock prices are cheap. Their dividends are being paid from earnings that aren’t there.

Big oil is a big dividend trap. A low payout ratio – the percentage of earnings a company pays out to investors – is generally a good thing. Until that number turns negative, that is.

BP plc (BP) lost $2.49 per share over the last 12 months while stubbornly paying out $2.40 in dividends – for a big yet unsustainable current yield of 7.8%.

How’d it fill the gap? Almost $5 billion in additional long-term debt.… Read more

A great way to spot winning dividend-payers is to start with what I call the “Rodney Dangerfield stocks” — companies that get less respect from investors than they deserve.

Right now, I’m eyeing an underappreciated stock in the tech sector, of all places. It’s poised to turn in easy double-digit gains in its share price and dividend over the next five years.

This deal is available because “first-level investors” are missing the big picture. That’s the exact setup to look for when searching for a tech bargain. A cheap valuation isn’t enough, because a stock may very well be cheap for a reason (usually when its technology is obsolete, or heading that way).… Read more

Most “first-level investors” spent the holiday season dumping any and all fixed income holdings like expired eggnog. The Fed rate hike got in their heads, and in their panic they tossed some perfectly good funds in the return bin.

Many closed-end funds are now trading at double-digit discounts to their net asset values (NAVs). Doubleline Capital founder and famed bond guru Jeffrey Gundlach recently told CNBC that buying a fund trading at a 15-20% discount is “sort of a no-brainer.”

Reason being, you’re getting $1 worth of assets for just 80 or 85 cents. That’s free money for us calculated second-level thinkers.… Read more

The fat yields on business development companies (BDCs) just got even fatter.  Many annualized yields are now north of 10%, but that’s not thanks to a surge in payouts. Rather, it’s a byproduct of plummeting prices.

BDCs loan money to private companies. Many of the loans are floating rates, so the recent rate hike wasn’t the issue. Investors’ broader concern – and reason why many BDC stocks crashed by more than their annual dividend in a week’s time – is borrower risk.

Regular readers know we’ve been keeping an eye on the free-fall in high yield bonds. Of late, that’s accelerated.… Read more

If you want to double—or even triple—your dividend income overnight, there’s an easy way to do it: seek out companies that regularly pay special dividends.

Management usually announces these one-time payouts (which are always larger than regular quarterly dividends) after reporting a blowout quarter, or if they suddenly find themselves sitting on a ballooning cash pile. And with S&P 500 firms holding onto a combined $2.1-trillion stash, special dividends are becoming a lot more common these days.

They can instantly turn a company with a ho-hum dividend yield into an income investor’s dream.

Microsoft (MSFT) famously paid out a $3.00 special dividend in November 2004 that amounted to $32 billion from its long-term money pile.… Read more

Baby boomers are retiring in incredible numbers – 10,000 a day according to Social Security eligibility. A large majority of these are flush with the dual rewards of stock market investments and Social Security income.

But like death and taxes, growing old is an eventuality that we all must face. The details of how long we live – and where we do it – are as much dependent upon our health as they are money.  The one thing we can say for sure is that it’s not getting any less expensive to live longer.

It’s why the senior housing industry and these two REITs – Welltower (HCN) and Ventas  (VTR) – are permanently attached to my watch list.… Read more

Dividend darling Kinder Morgan (KMI) just reminded us why we need to know what’s funding that payout we love receiving every quarter.

KMI investors who didn’t see the dividend cut coming were flying blissfully blind. Everyone else, meanwhile, saw the business problems from a mile away. They sold the stock down 58% in the six months prior to the actual announcement…

This is the problem with “first-level” income investing. We can’t just buy a stated dividend and trust that it will be there next quarter. Instead, we must employ more nuanced second-level thinking to look beyond the obvious. This way, we can buy bargains the market is missing… and avoid time bombs like KMI.… Read more