Seven point six percent is the average dividend for my 20 favorite stocks and funds today. These payouts provide us with a secure “No Withdrawal” Retirement Portfolio. We never have to sell any shares thanks to our dividend-powered cash flow:

Of course, we prefer upside as well. Why settle for a mere dividend when we can add some price appreciation, too! It’s possible with these high payers, and we typically enjoy gains one (or more) of these ways:

1. Additional dividend growth powers our stocks higher. Other investors see their already-generous yields rising even higher and pay more for our shares.

Many investors hear the word “leverage” and immediately get nervous—but the truth is, borrowed cash is actually vital to big closed-end fund (CEF) returns.

I’ll show you why—and how a huge misunderstanding about leverage will lead to big gains for CEFs this year—in a moment.

Before we get to that, though, we need to understand why this one simple word sends investors into a cold sweat in the first place.

A 90-Year Old Tale

The cloud hanging over leverage stretches back to the crash of 1929, and tales of stockbrokers who borrowed too much cash before the collapse and then leaped out their office windows.… Read more

A crazy stock market is perfect for covered call writers. When volatility is high, so are option premiums, which means this popular income strategy should be a profitable one throughout 2019.

New to covered calls? Here’s how they work:

1. You buy at least 100 shares of a stock or fund. You now own these outright. (Why 100? Because one covered call contract covers 100 shares of underlying stock.)
2. You then sell (“write”) covered calls at a price around or above the stock’s current price for additional income. In doing so, you are agreeing to sell the stock at that price – the “strike” – in exchange for money today.

My friend is a young 41-year old millionaire. And the poor guy is basically broke!

Meanwhile there’s a conservative yet savvy grandma in the Midwest raking in more monthly income than my boy, on a modest $387,000 in savings.

What’s her secret? We’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s lament my man’s millionaire curse.

His stash of cash does him no good, other than giving him something to worry about. His million-dollar problem? He doesn’t know how to turn his green pile into a steady, sustainable income stream.

And since he believes in efficient markets, he has no interest in exploring investments that could pay him 7% or 8% annually – providing him with $75,000+ in yearly income while leaving his capital intact (or better than intact) to boot.… Read more

It’s a retirement-killing mistake far too many fund investors make—and it’s so easy to spot that you’ll be kicking yourself if you fall into this trap!

So let’s expose this classic blunder right off the top: I’m talking about buying two deadly types of funds: leveraged and inverse exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Blacklisted by the Big Fund Companies

In a nutshell, these funds promise outsized returns by borrowing money and investing that cash in a so-called winning strategy (leveraged ETFs) or by short selling a losing strategy and delivering the returns to shareholders (inverse ETFs).

Sounds logical, right?

Trouble is, both approaches fail miserably in the real world.… Read more

The Dow Jones Industrial Average emerged from correction territory this week, as investors applauded earnings in the financial sector. At the same time, markets chose to ignore the now record-long U.S. government shutdown and ongoing Brexit saga in the U.K.

Financials Start Earnings Season On Positive Note

Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C) and Goldman Sachs (GS) all traded higher this week, after posting solid quarterly results. The earnings news was not all rosy however, as Morgan Stanley (MS) fell short of expectations on Thursday. Outside of the financial sector, Ford Motor (F) also cut profit expectations this week.

As the following chart shows, quarterly reporting activity will continue to pick up next week and the floodgates really open in February.… Read more

Think you can’t retire on anything less than a million bucks?

Many people would answer that question with a “yes.” If you’re one of them, I have great news: the “million-dollar myth” is just that, a myth.

I’ll tell you why in a second. Then I’ll reveal 4 buys throwing off a safe cash dividend yielding 8.5%—letting you fund your golden years on a lot less.

(These 4 are the tip of the iceberg, by the way. At the very end of this article, I’ll give you 20 more retirement lifesavers paying gaudy 8% average dividends, as well!)

A Million-Dollar Retirement … on $470K!?… Read more

One of the silliest doom-and-gloom stories you’ll hear these days is how we’re all going to be destroyed by debt. It’s just plain wrong—and letting this fear win could mean a crippling blow to your nest egg this year and beyond.

In fact, it’s already caused one group of investors to miss out on a massive 265% return, as I’ll explain below.

Getting Half the Story

The easiest way to understand how the debt terror works is to bring it down to a single example. I like to use Mark Zuckerberg.

Back in 2012, Zuckerberg got a mortgage for about $6 million.… Read more

Eric Ervin was making his wealthy client so much money that he suggested: “Hey, why don’t you just quit your job?”

The investor saw the opportunity to scale Eric’s “secret strategy” – and he wanted to help fund a new venture to bring this brilliance to the financial masses!

Both guys knew the power of dividend growth investing. But Eric’s second-level insight is what made them both a boatload of cash. He figured out a way to bet purely on the higher payouts – as close to a “sure thing” as you’ll ever see in stocks. Here’s what I mean.

Blue chip stocks tend to raise their dividends every year.… Read more

The “Dogs of the Dow” is one of the simplest, most well-known dividend strategies on Wall Street. And investors who choose to jump in during 2019 will be shooting for their fifth straight year of market-beating returns.

Of course, by being a little more selective, you and I can beat even the Dogs – just like we did last year!

A quick refresher: The “Dogs of the Dow” strategy involves buying the 10 highest-yielding stocks in the 30-component Dow Jones Industrial Average at the start of the year. The idea is that when you buy blue-chip stocks, high relative yields are actually signal value.… Read more