The Best 9%+ Dividends for a Bearish 2019

Brett Owens, Chief Investment Strategist
Updated: January 2, 2019

Thanks to the December selloff, it’s relatively easy to find 9% yields. The stock market was a relentlessly receding tide in the fourth quarter, which is bad for “buy and hope” investors but quite helpful for income specialists like us.

Let’s look first at real estate investment trusts (REITs). Many now pay 9% – some good, some bad. The main index Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ) has only paid this much (4.9%) twice before in the past ten years:

VNQ Is Rarely This Generous

By cherry picking the lot we can find 49 stocks paying 9% or more. But we should avoid names like Government Properties Income Trust (GOV), which frequently pops up on cute recession-proof dividend lists.… Read more

1 Click to Get a 9.8% Dividend From Google

Brett Owens, Chief Investment Strategist
Updated: January 1, 2019

What if I told you there’s a way you can buy your favorite blue chips and get a dividend 5 times bigger than what your typical S&P 500 name pays today?

Let’s be honest: with an income stream like that, backed by popular names like cigarette maker Altria Group (MO), telco Verizon (VZ) and even Google, now known as Alphabet (GOOGL)—more on these three stocks below—you’d leap at the chance, right?

The truth is, you’d be crazy not to.

Well, now you can. And today I’m going to show you exactly how to do it—and 1 fund yielding 9.8% to get you there instantly.… Read more

The $31,200-a-Year Retirement Strategy Wall Street Doesn’t Want You to Know

Michael Foster, Investment Strategist
Updated: December 31, 2018

Today I’m going to show you how to get a livable income stream from a $300,000 nest egg—while growing your savings at the same time.

Sounds impossible, right?

Wrong.

What’s more, we’re going to pull it off using just six funds. When we’re done, we’ll end up with a simple, diversified portfolio that throws off an amazing, steady 10.4% dividend yield—more than five times the S&P 500 average!

And if you’re worried that this outsized yield could come at the cost of a weak total return, don’t be, because these funds have delivered 12% per year over the past decade.… Read more

3 Great Retirement Investments (and 2 Ticking Time Bombs to Avoid)

Brett Owens, Chief Investment Strategist
Updated: December 28, 2018

Today we’re going to talk about the single biggest risk you face in your golden years.

But don’t worry—I’ll also show you how to clobber that risk and set yourself up for an easy $40,000 in cash in every year of your retirement. More on that below.

First, the risk I’m talking about is the very real chance you’ll outlive your nest egg. Because a sweeping study says you could be very wrong about the length of your retirement.

A Hidden Danger

Here’s what the numbers say: in 1992, the University of Michigan asked 26,000 Americans 50 years of age and older how long they thought they’d live.… Read more

Ignore the Market Crash: Here’s When It’s Really Time to Sell a CEF

Michael Foster, Investment Strategist
Updated: December 27, 2018

With market volatility kicking into high gear, now is the perfect time to talk about one of the biggest questions CEF investors face: how do you know when it’s time to sell a closed-end fund (CEF)?

Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer to that question—and often investors who use conventional sell signals, like a falling market price, will end up selling at the worst time.

That leads me to my cardinal rule with CEFs: it’s easier to know when to buy than when to sell. If the fund is well managed, has a strong track record, is deeply discounted and has a relatively safe dividend, it’s generally a screaming buy.… Read more

Markets Overdue for Bounce: Stay Calm and 8% On

Brett Owens, Chief Investment Strategist
Updated: December 26, 2018

I know it’s tempting, but right now is not the time to flee from stocks to cash. Markets are extremely oversold and due for some sort of relief rally (at least). Liquidate now and we’re no better than the average investor who underperforms by selling low after buying high.

Plus by collecting our dividends we’ll soon outpace the investors who smartly (or more likely, luckily) sold in September. Here’s why.

Studies show it’s very difficult (and really, impossible) to know when it’s time to “get back into stocks.” Hulbert Financial recently ran the numbers for Barron’s on the advisors it monitors.… Read more

3 CEF Dogs That Will Soar in 2019 (and Pay 9%+ Dividends)

Michael Foster, Investment Strategist
Updated: December 24, 2018

Legendary investor George Soros is controversial, but his tremendous investment performance over a lifetime is indisputable. Soros attributes it to a concept called “reflexivity.”

Simply put, this refers to the tendency for market expectations to create market outcomes. For instance, when the market expects a fund to crash, it will sell off that fund, thereby causing it to crash.

Here’s the opportunity: when a fund crashes just because everyone thinks it will, the fund tends to bounce back when everyone realizes the market made a mistake.

This happens constantly in the closed-end fund (CEF) universe—a relatively small world of $300 billion in assets managed in about 500 funds.… Read more

Week in Review: FOMC Sends Bulls Running

David Peltier, Senior Investment Analyst
Updated: December 22, 2018

Investors did not like what Chairman Powell and the Fed had to say this week, resulting in a 1,300-point decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in less than 24 hours.

When Doves Cry

As expected, the FOMC raised its short-term interest rate target on Wednesday, to a range of 2.25%-2.50%. The composite expectation of the committee for 2019 also turned more dovish, now calling for two more rate increases next year, down from three.

It’s not in the Fed’s mandate to make equity investors happy and traders quickly voiced their disapproval of the policy changes.

Prior to the announcement at 2 p.m.… Read more

The Perfect Pullback Rx: These 28 Upcoming Dividend Hikes

Brett Owens, Chief Investment Strategist
Updated: December 21, 2018

You can double your money in perfectly safe, well-known dividend stocks. But only if you know the secret! Novice income investors gravitate toward higher current yields, but often that can result in hitching your sleigh to stagnant stocks with equally stagnant dividends.

For monster total returns, we want to pay attention to dividend increases. Because these hikes don’t just bump up the yield on your initial investment – they also trigger stock-price increases, too. If a stock is already paying out 3% but then juices its payout by 10%, investors will see that new 3.3% yield and buy more shares. That buying will drive the stock’s price up, and the yield back down, eventually toward 3%.… Read more

Buy This Tech Fund Before Dec. 31 (and get a 9.3% dividend)

Michael Foster, Investment Strategist
Updated: December 20, 2018

On January 1, 2018, I made my boldest prediction of the year: bitcoin was going to crash. Here’s what happened since:

Crytocurrencies Are Dying

There are lots of reasons why bitcoin has cost investors a lot of money: it’s inefficient; it’s not private; and glitches and hacking cause people to lose bitcoins. But the main reason is this: the dumb money followed the smart money—and ended up holding the bag.

I’ve seen this story play out many times, which is why I urge you to be contrarian and avoid the traps market manipulators set up, whether it was dot-com stocks in the late ’90s, housing in the mid-2000s or fantasy Internet money in the 2010s.… Read more