A lot more investors have been emailing me lately, fearful of a market downturn. This tells me one thing: today’s market is a scared market.

But you don’t need to be scared. In fact, thanks to overhyped investor fears, you can easily lock in 7% dividends and prepare yourself for a downturn with less risk than you’d get buying stocks directly.

The key? The 5 unloved (for now) funds I’ll show you in a moment. First, though, you might be wondering why I say these funds are less risky than individual stocks.

For one, each of these 5 hold hundreds of assets, spreading your cash out in a way that a basket of a few stocks can’t.… Read more

If pricey stocks and low dividend yields have you frustrated, it’s time to consider publicly traded (and perfectly legal) “tax loopholes” that yield up to 9.8%. They’re as easy to buy as any stock or fund – in fact, they are stocks. They just happen to pay more.

Private equity investing is a proven way to print money. Problem is, it’s typically expensive for individual investors like you and me to get involved. Private equity minimums range anywhere from $10 million at the high end to “just” $250,000 depending on the fund. Frankly, that’s more than most normal retirement investors can or even should put in any one investment.… Read more

Earlier this week, the Fed raised short-term interest rates for the third time this year, to a range of 2% to 2.25%. History suggests that higher rates can hurt dividend stocks in two ways:

First, companies that regularly borrow a lot of money (like REITs and utilities) now have to pay more to do so. Second, money market accounts, CD’s and short-term bonds are actually paying meaningful returns for the first time in a decade, offering a competitive alternative to dividends.

However, higher interest rates don’t have to sound the death knell for all dividends. By looking for the companies whose earnings expectations have actually been rising of late, you can sometimes find a healthy yield today and a business that is either resilient to, or even benefits from higher rates.… Read more

Something strange is happening in the investment-bank and hedge-fund world: a growing sense that the next recession (which, by the way, Wall Street has long been wrongly predicting for years) finally has a due date: 2020.

The number of Wall Street firms predicting this date is staggering.

Bloomberg’s Joe Wisenthal has collected a few predictions, such as one from Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, who said 2020 will be the economic “inflection point,” and Société Générale’s economic team, who said the likelihood of a 2020 recession has risen due to, among other things, a tight labor market and higher borrowing costs.… Read more

The IRS already allows REITs (real estate investment trusts) to avoid paying income taxes if they pay out most of their earnings to shareholders. As a result these firms tend to collect rent checks, pay their bills and send most of the rest of the cash to us as dividends.

But the IRS considers the dividends you and I receive from our REITs “nonqualified” dividends. This means they are taxed at our regular income rate.

Until now, that is. REIT investors will benefit from the tax breaks that “pass through” businesses will receive in the 2018 tax code. Investors will be allowed deduct 20% of their REIT dividend income (per U.S.… Read more

Right now, there are 2 fears giving first-level investors night terrors (and costing them huge gains and income).

1. Rising interest rates will kill stocks, and…
2. Nosebleed valuations (along with more record highs for the S&P 500) will kill stocks.

The problem? Both are nonsense!

Let’s take the second one first—then we’ll push on to 4 buys that not only survive rising rates but soar faster than rates do!

A Painful Wait on the Sidelines

Sure, the market’s current P/E ratio looks scary at around 23, and that alone could keep you clear of stocks now. Trouble is, sitting in cash isn’t exactly comforting as stocks rise and inflation chews up your nest egg.… Read more

Today I’m going to show you a “1 click” way to buy real estate and squeeze an 8% income from it year in and year out.

So if you drop $300k into this investment—the price of the average American home—you’ll instantly trigger a $24,000 yearly income stream.

And no, we’re not going to parade through open house after open house to do it. We’ll buy in right from the comfort of our brokerage accounts!

Best of all, we can be assured that our “properties” will be in the hottest neighborhoods, setting us up for fast price gains, too.

Zero Deadbeat Tenants, Zero Hidden Costs

If you already own rental property, I don’t have to tell you that it’s far from a passive investment.… Read more

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) and their typically high dividend yields are a key part of a payout-powered retirement portfolio that’s built to dish out higher and higher dividends every single year.

The five REITs we’ll discuss today will pay you 4% to 7.3% per year in dividends alone. And this income stream will only grow as time passes, because these firms have growing cash flow streams they must pass on to shareholders in order to keep their privileged REIT status.

REITs may not get much mainstream coverage, but the academics are starting to catch on to these dividend machines. Last year, I pointed you to a study from Wilshire Research that showed “dramatic” results when REITs were added to a retirement portfolio.… Read more

The best way to learn about a company is directly from the executives that run the business on a day-to-day basis. However, there are thousands of actively traded stocks in the U.S. alone and CEOs rarely make the time to speak directly with anyone outside of their largest investors.

That’s why I keep an eye out for Form 4’s, which is the SEC filing insiders are required to submit within two business days of trading shares in their own company.

You don’t need to take my word for it, rather famed investor Peter Lynch is my inspiration to sift through a virtual stack of regulatory filings.… Read more

The third quarter is ending soon, so we need to talk about earnings—and especially how this soaring market can hand us a fat 10% cash dividend (and upside), starting today.

Earnings have been an obsession of mine this year, because a lot of investors are ignoring terrific news. If you follow them, you can easily miss out on big profits.

For instance, remember when trade-war threats and tensions with North Korea did this to the S&P 500?

First-Level Investors Took a Hit …

Anyone reading the headlines who panicked and sold into this mini-correction lost a lot of money—in total, billions of dollars of wealth disappeared in a matter of days.… Read more