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

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

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

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

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

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

Moe Ansari, host of the popular Market Wrap radio show and podcast, recently asked me on air:

“Brett, how do you find dividend paying stocks that will double your money?”

He was intrigued enough by my analysis to ask me on his show, but I knew he was a bit skeptical as well. And that’s perfectly normal – even experienced investors and money managers like Moe think of dividend payers in terms of their current yields only.

Price appreciation potential often gets ignored, and the thought of achieving 100%+ profits from a safe dividend payer sounds absurd. But smart investors bank their payouts while their stocks double in price – whether it’s a bull, bear or sideways market.… Read more

I’ve zeroed in on five real estate investment trusts (REITs) set to hand you three critical things in 2019:

• High, safe payouts whose yields crush the typical S&P 500 dividend.

• Booming dividend growth: These five have already boosted their payouts an amazing 38%, on average, in the last five years—and they’re just getting started!

• Double-digit upside as an overlooked market shift kicks in, sending investors scrambling into these ironclad income plays.

Why am I so confident?

Because a long-running (and needless) worry that’s shackled REITs through 2018 has just been cast aside—but most folks are only starting to sense this big shift.… Read more

Today I’m going to show you why this market isn’t as spooked as you might think. Then I’m going to reveal the 1 sector (and 1 fund boasting an incredible 8.7% dividend yield) that’s a screaming bargain now.

Let’s start with the state of play as I write this.

Here’s a question: of the 11 sectors that make up the S&P 500, how many do you think are negative for 2018?

If you said more than 5, the pessimism of the financial press has tainted your worldview. Take a look at this table:

5 in the Red, 5 in the Green

A close look at the 11 sectors of the S&P 500 is crucial, because we quickly see that 5 sectors are green, 5 are down and 1 is flat for 2018.… Read more

The U.S. and China appear to be playing the long game with their trade talks, so investors shifted their focus more to Europe this week. The prospect of a Brexit vote fizzled out on Monday, and some selling pressure was relieved from stocks back here in the U.S.

Theresa May kicked the can down the road, so to speak, delaying a UK Parliament vote on finalizing the Brexit process, as reports suggested the measure would fail. May’s position as Prime Minister was then challenged by her own party with a confidence vote on Wednesday, which she survived.

On Thursday, Mario Draghi and the ECB announced the end of their quantitative easing (QE) strategy at the end of the year.… Read more