As our quarantine headquarters migrated from the cozy accommodations of Los Living Room in March to the spaciousness of Puerto Backyarda in April, life got a bit more manageable.

Then, in May, it got hot. Really hot.

“Want the hose?” I offered. “It doesn’t feel like it’s 103 if you get your feet wet.”

My Puerto guest, a friend who’d stopped over for an afternoon beer (actually, three 100 calorie “light hazy ales”) was not amused that we were stuck outside. The poor guy was wearing pants, and quite frankly, he didn’t stand a chance.

It goes without saying that he has not yet returned.… Read more

With the epic “relief rally” finally on fumes, it’s time to consider jettisoning any dividends that (let’s be honest) should have been sold in February. Stock prices are quite disconnected from their underlying fundamentals, and the four firms we’re going to discuss today have particularly poor prospects.

Sure, these yields appear generous. But these days, we can lose this much in a few bad trading sessions.

(Low payout ratios—the percentage of cash flow being paid as dividends—are usually preferable. A negative ratio is not! More on this wreck shortly.)

As you know, I don’t provide personal financial advice. That said, if I owned any of these shares, I’d sell ’em!… Read more

Most folks think retiring on $527K is a dream—but most folks haven’t heard of high-yield closed end funds (CEFs). With yields as high as 22%, these unsung income plays can fast-track your race to financial independence.

Here’s how: let’s say you’re looking to clock out and use your portfolio to replace $50,000 in yearly employment income. Many financial advisors will tell you that the most you can withdraw out of a conservative stock portfolio is 4% a year (this is known as the 4% safe withdrawal rate). Simple math tells us that this means you will need $1,250,000 to retire.… Read more

With pandemic cases once again in full focus, the market is (once again) trading like its assets. Everything’s up big one day, everything’s down big the next.

We rational, contrarian-minded income investors however know that the stock market is indeed a “market of stocks.” It doesn’t make sense for everything to trade “as one.” We should look to buy the underappreciated, underowned dividends on these dips.

I’m tracking a number of undiscovered dividend growth stories in the underfollowed small-cap space. Most investors don’t consider income from small caps. These companies don’t attract the eyeballs that mega-cap tech firms and well-known consumer brands do, so analysts and the media typically avoid the small-cap space, even in good years.… Read more

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