Income hunters that made their way into real estate investment trusts (REITs) at the start of 2019 are rolling in more than rent checks right now. Not only did they enjoy the sector’s generous dividends, they enjoyed big price gains to boot.

Even the “dumbly indexed” Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ) peeled off a sweet 28.9% in total returns last year. That’s its best showing since 2014, and more than double its average annual return of 11%-plus over the past decade.

But do these big 2019 gains mean that we’re due to regress in 2020?

I’ve previously warned about the dangers of holding REITs whose fundamentals are out of whack with its valuation.… Read more

Today I’m going to show you how one lucky group of investors nailed a once-in-a-lifetime shot at a huge, tax-free dividend stream and a quick 18% gain, too!

Well, not exactly “once-in-a-lifetime.” Because this opportunity is still waiting for you today—you just need to know how to tap it.

In a moment, I’ll give you the goods (including a name and ticker) on a closed-end fund (CEF) to target now. It hands you a 4.2% dividend you likely won’t have to pay a penny of federal tax on (and your payout could be exempt from state taxes, as well). 

To cut to the chase, thanks to its lucrative tax breaks, this fund’s 4.2% payout could be worth 7% or more to you today, depending on your tax bracket.… Read more

A big “thank you” to the 1,358 subscribers who attended our How to Bank 20% Returns (Plus Sky-High Yields!) in 2020 with Safe Dividend Stocks webcast last Wednesday! We had a lively question and answer session. I love the enthusiasm!

Let’s use our time together today to review some of the questions that kept popping up.

Q: In terms of expected returns, what is the difference between your Contrarian Income Report, Hidden Yields and new Dividend Swing Trader strategies?

Our Contrarian Income Report service is designed to maximize the income you receive from your portfolio today. In CIR, we’re fattening up your monthly and quarterly dividend checks as much as we can without sacrificing principal.… Read more

I hope last week’s Iran head-fake didn’t have you thinking about buying so-called “safe” dividends like Treasuries. Because these tired income standbys aren’t safe at all!

With your nest egg yielding a pathetic 1.9%, you’re guaranteed losses, with inflation running at 2.1%. So today we’re going to make a simple contrarian move that will:

• Hand us huge 8.6%+ cash dividends—nearly five times what Treasuries pay.
• Pay us every month, not every quarter.
• Set us up for nice price gains “on the side,” and …
• Give us “Iran insurance,” helping shield our nest egg against swift drops triggered by global instability, an economic downturn—any reason, really.

Today we’re going to talk about the biggest threat to your portfolio (and dividends!) you face in 2020.

It’s not a recession. It’s a near-irresistible human impulse—purposely amped up by the financial press—that could lock in big losses for you, or cause you to miss out on a huge gain, like the 486%+ some investors left on the table.

Let’s talk about that now. It starts with all the doom-and-gloom stories you’ve likely read about a looming market crash lately. (They’re hard to miss: you can find at least one on most major news sites every day.)

First off, don’t believe the hype: truth is, there’s a lot of data saying we aren’t anywhere near a downtick, let alone a full-blown once-in-a-lifetime collapse.… Read more

The “race to zero” heats up again. You’ve surely heard that Vanguard is now slicing and dicing its already-low fees and commissions. That sounds great, but in reality, the low-fee race is pennywise yet dividend-foolish for us income investors.

To retire on secure, high-yielding long-term investments, we actually prefer to pay a fair management fee. I’ll outline this in a moment via a trio of secure 7% payers. Their generous yields tower above mainstream low-fee options:

More on these three dividend funds in a minute. First, let’s review why we prefer to pay for professional management.

Vanguard kicked off the new trading year by joining the “no-commission” fray that caught the likes of Charles Schwab (SCHW) and E*Trade (ETFC) by surprise in 2019.… Read more

What’s does 2020 hold for your utility stocks (and closed-end funds)? Will these steady income plays hand us another round of big gains and dividends? Or is there trouble ahead?

These are reasonable questions to ask after these “boring” stocks poured on a huge—and rather “un-utility-like”—26% total return last year:

Utilities or Exploding Small Caps? Tough to Tell.

Let’s dive into three critical factors that will tell the tale for utilities in 2020. And because it’s the season for forecasts, I’ll throw in my verdict on the sector for the coming year, too, and name five utility closed-end funds (CEFs) paying huge dividends of 6.3% to 9.4%.… Read more

Successful dividend investing is simple, though not necessarily easy. There are nuances which trip up many investors (including most professionals!). These twists and turns create “yield alpha” opportunities for contrarian-minded income investors like us.

If everyone else in the market were perfectly grounded and calculated, there would be no chance for us to make above-average returns. After all, the 11.8% and 18.8% annualized returns that my Contrarian Income Report and Hidden Yields readers are earning would be snapped up in a perfectly efficient market.

Thanks to these inefficiencies, we are able to bank big yields and price gains in Dividend Land.… Read more

Let’s cut through the thousands of market predictions out there and dive into what’s really ahead for your dividends in 2020. We’ll also discuss two things that should be high on your “must have” list for any dividend stock you buy this year.

In fact, these two easy-to-spot indicators handed one group of investors a 91.6% return, with less volatility than your typical investor saw. I’ll show you how they did it shortly. First, let’s talk about my outlook for the year ahead.

My 2020 Outlook 

Here’s why most market predictions miss the mark: the pundits simply look at what happened in the past year and spit out a forecast based on that.… Read more

Think we’re stuck with pathetic dividends and sluggish growth in 2020?

I get it. Many folks I talk to see the coming year this way. Some are even selling stocks, in a doomed effort to “lock in” gains. The problem? What the heck do you do next?

Sitting in cash means watching helplessly as inflation erodes your nest egg. And dividends? Forget it! You’ll kiss those goodbye the moment you hit the “sell” button.

Here’s the good news: you’re not stuck between the pathetic sub-2% payout on regular stocks and the 0% you’ll get in cash. There’s a better way—one that pays you huge 6%+ dividends and regularly crushes stocks!… Read more