These days, I’m hearing from a lot of folks who are pretty nervous, bracing for yet another round of dividend cuts to hit them out of the blue.

It’s understandable. Recently, we’ve seen plenty of dividend “sacred cows,” like Wells Fargo (WFC), mall landlord Simon Property Group (SPG), and senior-care operators Welltower (WELL) and Ventas (VTR) cut or eliminate their payouts.

In the second-quarter of 2020, 244 firms increased their dividends, according to Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices. That sounds good until we see that 639 companies decreased their payouts. In other words, dividend investors were two-and-a-half times as likely to receive a pay cut as they were a raise.… Read more

Few people realize it, but there’s a way to get big dividends (I’m talking 6%+ payouts) from popular tech stocks—Facebook (FB), Amazon.com (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) among them.

I know that when most people hear about tech these days, they immediately think the sector is overvalued. It’s easy to see why: tech is the sole driver of the S&P 500’s gain this year. In fact, when you hear people say the stock market is up in 2020, you might want to correct them and say that, in fact, it’s tech, and not the market as a whole, that’s up.… Read more

America’s in a dividend desert, and that’s forcing income hunters to get creative. Are 10.1% paying mREITs the answer?

The S&P 500 hasn’t yielded this poorly (1.7%) in roughly a decade. T-notes deliver a fractional yield. Worse, even areas of traditionally elevated yield are offering just so-so payouts right now. At less than 4% on average, high-yield stocks and real estate investment trusts (REITs) will put retirement investors well short of their income goals.

The good news? A pair of market niches—business development companies (BDCs) and mortgage REITs—can put 3x that amount of money into our pockets.

I recently pointed readers to a “3-click” BDC portfolio yielding 10.9%, which is a little less than the BDC average of 12%.… Read more

I hate to see so many folks buying into the hype and snapping up popular ETFs like the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO).

Not only are they denying themselves a proper dividend (with VOO, you’d need a $3-million nest egg to generate a liveable $40,000 income stream!), they’re missing out on gains, too.

That’s because this is no longer a market you can simply ride with a passive index fund. We’re now entering a new investment world that requires two things:

1. Active management (because the pandemic has sharply split this market into winners and losers) and …
2. More income. With the volatility we’ve lived through, I think you’ll agree that a high cash stream, like, say, the 7%+ dividends you get from actively managed closed-end funds (CEFs) provides a lot more safety than here-today, gone-tomorrow paper gains.

The economy is a mess—and that’s presenting quite the opportunity for these landlords, and contrarians like us. Tenants are still paying, but these stocks are priced like a few are flaking.

That’s not the case. Plus, one firm is about to take advantage of a weak 2020 market to go shopping and secure future cash flows at a bargain.

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are trading at 2020 discounts. Investors trashed these stocks swiftly and thoroughly when they realized April 1, 2020 rent payments were going to be a disaster. But we now have a few months of pandemic landlording in the books, and there’s evidence that some REITs are going to be all right after all.… Read more

We just got two powerful signals that the time is right to move into one of my favorite dividend plays: high-yield REITs (real estate investment trusts).

Before we go further, I can understand if you’re leery of REITs. Lots of income seekers were swept up in the “March Massacre,” when investors realized REITs’ April rent collections would be a disaster. And even though REITs have recovered somewhat, most are still underwater on the year.

REITs Sink, Then Bump Along the Bottom

But don’t take that to mean REITs are down for the count, because this is where our opportunity lies. Truth is, when it comes to REITs, most folks think it’s still March, even though the situation today is far better.… Read more

These days, I’m hearing from a lot of readers who are worried about this market rebound—and wondering whether they should buy high-yield stocks or sit on the sidelines.

They’re right to be worried—the S&P 500’s 19% surge (!) in the last 12 months has only been topped a handful of times in the last 20 years, and none of those 12-month periods saw a pandemic that shuttered the global economy.

Pandemic Strikes … Stocks Soar?

So what the heck is going on here? And how should you respond?

Well, here’s my (admittedly contrarian) take: the stock market should be at record highs, and you should be buying stocks now—especially high-yield stocks—as long as you choose the right ones, of course.… Read more

We’re in the deepest recession since World War II, yet the yield on the S&P 500 is at a 10-year low. Buy it today for a lame 1.7% yield.

So, we have high stock prices and investor sentiment, a terrible economy—and no dividend yield to compensate us for the concerning level of risk. Why would any serious dividend investor be interested in this “deal?”

Fortunately, there are better bargains out there. Today we’ll talk about a less-chatted-about area of the market that pays more. Seven times more, to be specific, as we craft a dividend portfolio that yields 10.9% (yes, you read that right.)… Read more

Have you read the latest? The media says municipal bonds, our favorite plays for safe, tax-free dividends, are facing a surge in defaults.

That, of course, sounds like terrible news for “munis,” which are issued by local governments to fund infrastructure. Munis’ government backing is a big reason why their default rates are microscopic: typically around 0.01%.

So are our rich, tax-free dividends really about to be stolen away by a wave of defaults? No way! In fact, now is a great time for us contrarians to move into these stout dividend plays.

And when you buy your munis through another income favorite of mine, closed-end funds (CEFs), you get something truly special: 5% yields that, due to their tax-free-nature, work out to much more: if you make, say, $150,000 a year, your “true” payout on a 5% muni-CEF is a sky-high 6.9%.… Read more

Last week, I accomplished something that had been on my “to do” list for no less than three months.

I figured out how to log into my 401(K)!

You would think a simple “password reset” would not be that difficult, especially for a guy who has started a software company or three in his day. Well, I’m not embarrassed, just glad that my long personal investing nightmare is over.

What is it about 401(K) access? It’s a circus when we try to log into my wife’s retirement plan, too. (Any task that starts with “logging into her company’s VPN” is off to a rough start.)… Read more