Today we’re going to cut through the economic hype surrounding this crisis and jump on a little-noticed opportunity for double-digit upside and 7% dividends, too.

I’ll get into the raw numbers, and some specific tickers, shortly.

First, here’s a figure you may have read in the news: US households lost $6 trillion in the first quarter of 2020. That’s tough to get your head around: it equates to $57,551 per household.

Taken on its own, you might think it means we’re in for a long, dreary recovery. But there are a few facts we need to complete the picture.

The first: Americans didn’t go that deeply in debt to offset that loss.… Read more

Money printing is back in a big way, and we’ve been on the beat all month long. Two weeks ago, your income writer mentioned the other “I” word, inflation, and watched our customer service email box fill up.

Readers, rightfully so, were concerned that Fed Chair Jay Powell has been not-so-subtly orchestrating the largest money creation effort of all time. JP created more than $2.5 trillion since March, and in doing so, made all previous quantitative easing (QE) efforts look like amateur hour:

“Now That’s How You QE!” – Chairman JP

Lat week, your dividend analyst further stirred the pot by mentioning the other “D” word, deflation.… Read more

Need more proof this market is completely upside down? Look no further than this mess with Hertz Global Holdings (HTZ).

You likely know the story: the car-rental chain, run off the road by the coronavirus, filed for bankruptcy over the Memorial Day weekend. On the first trading day afterward, May 26, the stock fell to $0.56 … then soared 10X!

Investors Compete to See Who Can Lose the Most

It’s pulled back a bit since, but is still up 200% from where it stood right after its bankruptcy filing.

And get this: 159,000 of users of the popular Robinhood trading app owned Hertz as of June 19, according to Robintrack.… Read more

One of the worst disasters to befall investors in this crisis was something called the MORL dividend.

MORL is—or rather was—the ticker for the ETRACS Monthly Pay 2XLeveraged ETN (MORL). What’s MORL? It’s a double-leveraged bank-issued note designed to track the MVIS Global Mortgage REITs Index, a market-cap-weighted global mortgage-REIT index.

A mouthful, right?

But the jargon and obscure nature of this investment didn’t stop a lot of people from buying in. The reason was simple: MORL yielded as much as 25% back in March.

Think about that for a minute: a 25% dividend. Hold MORL for just four years and you’d get your entire investment back in cash payouts without selling a single share.… 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. Thanks to these inefficiencies, we are able to bank big yields and price gains in Dividend Land. Ready to retire on dividends? Follow these five steps and we’ll do it together. Let’s start with an obvious yet underappreciated rule for income investors.

Step 1: Count Your Dividends

Since we focus on high yield, most of our returns come from the “yield” component of stocks.… Read more

A handful of closed-end funds (CEFs) are boasting what are (at first) tantalizing dividend payouts. I’m talking 15%, 20% and even 40% annualized yields here.

Skeptical? You should be.

Today we’re going to delve into the two highest-paying funds in the CEF world and look at what’s driving their sky-high payouts. Each tells us a lot about what to avoid when buying CEFs for our portfolios.

High-Yield CEF #1: 22% Payout Masks a Dreadful Dividend History

The Cornerstone Strategic Value Fund (CLM) regularly yields more than 15%, even when average CEF yields are historically low. Now that all CEF yields are higher, due to an overall pullback in these funds’ market prices, CLM’s payout is a monster 22%.… Read more

I sure started a stir last week when I mentioned the other “I” word. Our usual beat here is income, but last week we discussed inflation and what it means for our dividend-paying bonds and stocks.

We received quite the response. A big hat tip to our excellent customer service team for fielding your questions!

I owe you a bit more detail, so let’s get into our financial FAQs this week. And while we’re at it, let me stir the pot a bit more by dropping the other “D” word, deflation.

We’re not getting theoretical for the sake of it.… Read more

This crisis has caused a lot of folks to develop a crippling fear when it comes to REITs: they see the beating mall owners like Simon Property Group (SPG) have taken and swear REITs off for good. 

To be sure, SPG took it on the chin in March, and has not gotten up:

Simon’s Business Model: Broken for Good

But way too many people think REITs are about shopping malls, and that’s about it. It’s too bad, because this first-level thinking causes them to miss out on a lot of upside—and dividend growth, too.

Beyond the Mall

Members of my Hidden Yields service know better: we wanted nothing to do with mall landlords before this crisis, because Amazon.com… Read more

You can be forgiven for not looking to the big-name tech stocks for high dividends. Just look at this rogue’s gallery of pathetic payouts!

• Facebook (FB): Dividend yield: 0%
• Amazon.com (AMZN): Dividend yield: 0%
• Apple (AAPL): Dividend yield: 0.9%
• Netflix (NFLX): Dividend yield: 0%
• Google, a.k.a. Alphabet (GOOGL): Dividend yield: 0%

Those are the so-called FAANG stocks—the darlings of the tech world. But they’re no place for retirees, or anyone else on the hunt for dividends. (Though there is one often-ignored way to get an 8.5% dividend from them; more on that in a second.)

Luckily for the folks who hold these stocks, which make up about 17% of the S&P 500, they’ve made up for their pathetic—or nonexistent—dividends in outsized price gains as the market has bounced back.… Read more

The broader market, as defined by the S&P 500, has rallied like crazy. But don’t worry, you haven’t “missed out” on anything. The rally has been carried by large, and largely non-dividend paying stocks!

Most income plays are just now getting up off the mat. We’ll discuss one of my favorites today.

Energy, for example, is in the middle of a “crash-and-rally” pattern. The ultimate cure for low energy prices is (or perhaps, was) low energy prices. Reason being, low prices force producers to slash output like crazy to save money, which in turn reduces supply which in turn boosts prices.… Read more