Be careful how you buy your bonds. The most popular tickers have a few “fatal flaws” that’ll doom you to underperformance at best, or leave you hanging in the event of a market meltdown at worst!

Let’s pick on the widely followed and owned iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) as an example. It has attracted $15 billion in assets because:

1. It’s convenient – as easy to buy as a stock.
2. It’s diversified (for better or worse, as we’ll see shortly) with 981 individual holdings.
3. It pays–5.6% today, to be specific.

The accessibility of funds like HYG appears cute and comfortable enough.… Read more

If you’re sitting in “dead money” Treasuries and CDs, the dawn of a new round of interest-rate cuts is probably the last thing you want to hear.

Since Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s “pivot” on rates in early January, the yield on the 10-year Treasury has plunged, from 2.7% to 2.0%.

So if you put a million bucks in Treasuries at the start of the year, you’d be banking $26,900 in income. That’s pathetic enough for a seven-figure nest egg!

But fast-forward just six months, and your mil fetches you far less: just $20,100.

Powell Will Spark a Stampede Into These 8% Dividends

With Treasury rates collapsing and the stock market soaring—driving S&P 500 dividend yields down to a lame 1.7%—there are few places for income-seekers to turn.… Read more

Let’s face it: you hardly ever get decent income from commodity stocks. And when you do, these payouts are usually first to get the axe next time, say, oil nosedives.

And with oil doing this…

Oil Falls—Oil Companies’ Profits to Follow

… you may worry that it’s about to get harder to squeeze income out of oil companies.

Still, if you’re worried about inflation or the Federal Reserve distorting markets, or if you just want to hedge your stock portfolio, you’ll likely turn to commodities at some point. And there’s no more established inflation hedge than gold.

There’s just one problem: gold doesn’t produce anything.… Read more

Seven percent dividends.

That’s what my 18 favorite stocks and funds yield on average in my “No Withdrawal” Retirement Portfolio. And it’s that very yield that gives the critically-acclaimed portfolio its name. Investors collect so much income every month that they don’t need to pull out their nest egg to make ends meet.

The regular dividend checks pay the regular bills.

That yield, by the way, was higher just a few months ago, but as prices go up, yields go down … and prices across the portfolio have been going up, up, up!

That’s no happy accident—that’s a vital component to a successful retirement portfolio that many advisors and financial pundits too often miss.… Read more

Today I’m going to give you a strategy—and a strong 6.5%-yielding fund—that both shine when the market throws a tantrum.

And both are way better than what most people do when things get rough: cash in.

Many studies have shown that trying to time the market simply doesn’t work. And even if you did have the superhuman ability to get in and out perfectly, you’d still underperform a buy-and-hold approach. Thanks to compound interest, keeping skin in the game is more important than trying to save your skin.

Options: Your (Surprising) Friend When Markets Roil

Instead of fruitlessly trying to time the market, we’re going to do something that actually works (and takes far less effort!).… Read more

I often get asked where I’m investing my retirement money. And these days, I’m also asked if this is even an appropriate time to buy stocks!

Well, I personally am buying. For starters, my 401(K) runs on autopilot. Every month, my contribution (and “Brett Inc.” company match) is plowed into Vanguard’s Dividend Growth Fund (VDIGX). No diversification, no market timing–100% into VDIGX.

Why this fund? Because in my plan, I have to choose from a set list Vanguard funds. And I’m naturally looking for an emphasis on dividend growth because I know it’s the path to 10%+ returns every year, a wealth-creating snowball!… Read more

Our Contrarian Income Report mailbag served up an important question from a reader this week. What are the perfect retirement dividends to buy and hold forever?

Our subscriber is retired and manages investments for him and his wife. He asked me how to build a portfolio that will give her reliable income, with little maintenance, if he can no longer look after their investments himself.

It’s a great question, and one that’s likely occurred to you, too. So let’s tackle it.

3 “Autopilot” 8% Dividends You Can Buy Now

While we always feel you should at least check in on your investments from time to time, let’s go ahead and piece together a portfolio we’d feel pretty comfortable buying and tucking away for the long term.… Read more

More CEF Insider subscribers have been asking me how to deal with volatility lately. It’s easy to see why:

Another Downturn Appears … Then Disappears

So today I’m going to give you an easy way to cushion your portfolio in this whipsawing market. I’m actually going to show you three ways.

All three are closed-end funds (CEFs) with a special “insurance policy” that tones down market lurches. But you’ll still enjoy market recoveries, like the one we’ve seen in recent days.

The best part: we’ll keep our income stream strong and growing, thanks to these three funds’ massive 6.7%+ dividend yields.… Read more

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are simply the best dividend payers you can own right now. These tax loopholes literally “print money” when interest rates fall. So, with Fed Chair Jay Powell signaling that rate easing is on the way, we should load up on real estate dividends.

REITs themselves have flown under cover for years, but “basic” income investors have finally started to wake up to just how effective REITs are. In fact, these income-friendly real estate plays are, quite literally, world beaters.

A Netherlands study examining global assets from 1960 to 2015 found that the top-performing area of the market was not stocks, not bonds, not gold – but real estate investment companies and trusts.… Read more

This levitating market just might have you thinking there are no more cheap 6%+ dividends out there.

Well, don’t worry, because there certainly are—particularly if you fish in the obscure pool of funds we’re going to dive into today.

It boasts plenty of big payouts of 6% and more. But most folks don’t even consider it, for two reasons:

• These funds have already soared this year (but one in particular is throwing off a big tax-free dividend and trades for 11% less than its “true” value; I’ll name that fund shortly).

• These funds’ yields are much higher than they appear.