S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats are great if you’ve already owned them for many years or decades. These stocks have raised their payouts for 25 straight years or more. Since share prices rise as their underlying dividends rise, these stocks have showered investors with 500% to 1,000% returns or better.

BUT – if you’re looking for yield today, “Club Aristocrat” is a tough place to find new income. On average, these stocks pay 2.2%. This means you can put a million dollars into them and collect only $22,000 per year – yikes.

Instead let’s consider the High Yield Dividend Aristocrats.… Read more

Each June, the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) hosts a conference that brings all of the key players in the sector together. For REIT investors, it’s the equivalent of the Super Bowl and it offers a window into who’s poised to perform well in the second half of the year and beyond.

This year, the focus in real estate remains about mergers and acquisitions, as small- and mid-range companies are combining to better compete with the larger players. Even the REITs that plan to go it alone for the time being are raising capital by selling non-core assets, with private equity and foreign capital bidding up prices.… Read more

If you’ve been holding cash and waiting for the perfect buying opportunity, your time to strike is now.

Because a very predictable market pattern has been repeating itself in the last few months—and is about to do so again.

Let’s recap.

First, there was the euphoria of January, followed by the panic selling of February and March, followed by renewed confidence in April, May and early June. But then, just a couple weeks ago, the market went back to panic mode. The reason is familiar: the looming trade war.

Back in February and March, President Trump threatened tariffs on goods from China, the EU and even Canada.… Read more

“You can really find 7% yields today? Safe ones?”

“Where???”

My personal trainer – a financially savvy person and investor – didn’t believe it.

He’s a young guy with two or three decades of active income left, so he’s as interested in building a giant pile of cash as he is in collecting dividends. So when I told him about closed-end funds (CEFs) – and the capital gains available in this inefficient market – he was blown away.

My kettlebell guru isn’t the only one, according to the big response we received from last week’s piece about “advanced level” CEF investing.… Read more

If you’re like most dividend investors, you’re probably keeping one eye on bond yields right now.

And, well, you should be … but only if you own low-yielding (or slow-growing) “bond proxies” like, say, PepsiCo (PEP).

But if you buy (or already own) the 5 “undercover” high yielders I’ll show you at the end of this article, I have great news for you: you can ignore inflation, bond yields and the Fed and simply keep on collecting your fat dividend checks.

Bond Yields: 1, PepsiCo: 0

Before we get to that, back to PepsiCo.

As you probably know, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note has risen from 2.3% in early December to more than 2.9% today.… Read more

With over 500 closed-end funds (CEFs) on the market, how do you choose the best one?

It’s not an easy question to answer, because there are literally dozens of metrics any CEF investor should look at before buying.

But you don’t have to worry, because in a moment, you’re going to get the “guts” of the 5-point system I’ve carefully designed to pick winning CEFs for our CEF Insider service.

So why is it important to have a good system?

Because if you don’t, you could find yourself holding an empty bag—like investors who bought the Virtus Total Return Fund (ZF) at the start of the year because they were seduced by its 15.3% dividend yield.… Read more

If you buy a stock that eventually increases its dividend by 100% in the coming years, you’re going to double your money or better as that happens. Find a payout with 200%, 300% or even 500% upside? Then we have a secure way to total returns up to 500%.

(We’ll discuss five generous payers in a minute, with price upside up to 500%.)

Why does dividend growth matter so much more than earnings, sales or even cash flow growth? Well, we income investors buy a stock for one of three reasons:

• A meaningful current yield
• The potential for a higher yield-on-cost over time, and/or
• Price gains.

Do you have a reliable way to generate monthly cash flow from the dividend stocks you own today? If not, why not?

Many “first-level” investors hope that their stocks will go higher so that they can sell them for cash flow. But, if you follow rich people, you’ll notice that they never actually sell any assets – they instead use them to generate more and more cash flow.

We can – and should – do the same. We can “tap” dividend stocks for regular cash flow. We can even turn the shares we own today into monthly dividend payments that provide us all the income we ever need for the rest of our lives (and we can hang onto the shares and enjoy price upside, too!)… Read more

Cash payouts of 8% and more (often paid monthly), plus price upside of 10%, 20%, sometimes even higher.

That’s what you get with closed-end funds—and you can often get it in just one buy!

But as terrific as these off-the-radar funds are, you still need to be careful: of the 500 or so CEFs available to us, only a handful are worth your attention. Others give you mediocre returns, at best. And some can drain away your cash fast!

And in a year that’s been challenging for just about all asset classes, the worst CEFs are showing their stripes, with the real laggards down double digits, and for good reason—their portfolios (as measured by net asset value, or NAV) can’t generate the performance they need to push their share prices higher.… Read more

Be careful how you buy your bonds. The most popular tickers have a few “fatal flaws” that’ll doom you to underperformance at best, or leave you hanging in the event of a market meltdown at worst!

Let’s pick on the widely followed and owned iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) as an example. It has attracted nearly $15 billion in assets because:

1. It’s convenient – as easy to buy as a stock.
2. It’s diversified (for better or worse, as we’ll see shortly) with 1,005 individual holdings.
3. It pays – 6% today, to be specific.

The accessibility of funds like HYG appears appears cute and comfortable enough.… Read more