Municipal bonds are off to a slow start in 2018 – which is usually a bullish sign for these tax-free payers.

We last “pounded the table” on munis in December 2016. They were coming off their worst month since the Great Recession, and we discussed their tendency to rally when they are hated:

“It’s impossible to call a top in yields (or bottom in munis) without the benefit of hindsight. But we contrarians make our money buying when nobody else wants to – and the last time munis were this hated, they returned 30-38% over the next 12 months.”

Turns out that was the bottom in munis.… Read more

Ignore the pundits’ petrified bleating over rising interest rates. Sure, the yield on the 10-Year Treasury has spiked to 2.9%, but you’re still not retiring on it!

Look at it this way: if you dropped, say, $500,000 into Treasuries tomorrow, you’d still only get $14,500 in income. That’s just a hair over the poverty line of $14,342 for two people aged 65+ living under one roof.

That’s an insult after a lifetime of hard work!

And it’s exactly why I’m going to show you 3 simple steps you can take to rack up safe dividends that average 6.6% now (and some go well beyond 9.4%).… Read more

The big rebound is on! But don’t worry, your opportunity to grab big gains (and dividends) hasn’t evaporated.

There’s still time!

And you can start with 3 of the 4 funds I pounded the table on back on February 19. At the time, all 4 of these cheap selloff buys were paying a combined 13.4% income stream.

So why are just 3 of these funds still worthy of your attention, only a few weeks later?

I’ll unpack that—and name these 3 top-flight funds—in a moment. First, let’s step back and take a look at what happened in a very wild February, and where it all leaves us now.… Read more

I love nothing more than bargain real estate – especially if I can buy it with a single-click of my mouse (or one tap from my smartphone).

REITs (real estate investment trusts) are as cheap as they’ve been this decade. Prices are low, and yields are high – making this an ideal time to buy.

Unless, of course, their tenants are watching their own business models vanish before their very eyes. If clients can’t pay the rent, then their REIT landlords won’t be able to pay us our dividends.

And if we’re not banking dividends from REITs, then what’s the point?… Read more

The market’s historic bull run just hit a brick wall … and I couldn’t be more excited.

I’ve had my eye on three robust dividend growers for months. And thanks to this pullback, they finally trade at attractive prices (and pay a blended 6.5% yield!)

February saw the S&P 500 decline for the first time since October 2016 – the month before Donald Trump was elected president. The index dipped 3.9% as every last sector dipped into the red. And with a little shove at the start of March, stocks have lost just about all their gains in 2018.

Stocks are Effectively Flat for 2018

Compared to the past year-plus, it feels like blood in the streets, sidewalks and gutters.… Read more

I’m getting plenty of worried emails from readers, asking me if the near-10-year bull market in stocks is over and if it’s time to get out.

I give them the same answer every time: no.

Today I’m going to show you why—and reveal 2 unheralded funds that hold shares of the household names you know and love, but with two added twists: they give you a predictable shot at big gains in the next 12 months. And they do it while handing you an outsized average dividend yield of 11.3%!

That’s enough to hand you $942 a month in income (or $11,300 a year) on just a $100,000 investment!… Read more

After a decade in the basement, interest rates are finally starting to move meaningfully higher. Let’s discuss the best stocks and bonds to buy with this backdrop.

If it feels like we had forever to prepare our portfolios for this moment – well, we did. This interest rate run has largely taken place on a treadmill. We’re almost two-and-a-half years into the Fed’s current rate hike cycle, and the Fed Funds rate is up a modest 1.25%.

Meanwhile the 10-year Treasury rate hadn’t really moved until recently. At all. The benchmark long bond now pays 2.86%:

Rates Slowly Grind Higher

If you believe your portfolio is behind the rate hike curve, it’s not by much.… Read more

Let me show you 3 headlines I ran across last week:

“Tax Cuts and Confidence Drive Surge of Payouts”
—Barron’s

“Global Dividends Break New Record in 2017, With More to Come for the Year Ahead”
—Institutional Asset Manager

“Trump’s Tax Cuts in Hand, Companies Spend More on Themselves Than Wages”
—New York Times

What do they have in common?

They’re all blaring out the fact that American companies have so much cash that they can’t ship it out to investors fast enough! Funny thing is, the herd is completely ignoring this fact. Check this out:

The Black Sheep …

We’re looking at the performance of the Vanguard Dividend Growth ETF (VIG), a good benchmark for stocks that consistently grow their dividend payouts, compared to the benchmark SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) as of March 1.… Read more

I had an odd experience a couple weeks ago.

I met up with some money managers and financial advisors. They were discussing the same problem: how tough it is to beat the market.

Since I focus on closed-end funds, and since I know of many CEFs that have beaten the market thanks to smart managers (I showed you 16 whose average return has crushed the S&P 500 back in November), I found this discussion puzzling. I asked them what they thought about the CEFs that have beaten the market.

The responses were pretty much the same. “It won’t continue … they were lucky … they just beat the market for a short period … index funds will ultimately outperform.”… Read more

Legendary investor and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) CEO Warren Buffett recently gave us an insight into the type of dividend-paying fund he’d invest in if he could:

“Our aversion to leverage has dampened our returns over the years. But (partner Charlie Munger) and I sleep well. Both of us believe it is insane to risk what you have and need in order to obtain what you don’t need.”

“Leverage” stands out because it’s a common tool used among several high-yield classes, from mortgage real estate investment trusts (mREITs) to business development companies (BDCs). Even closed-end funds (CEFs) – which some investors turn to for relative safety versus individual stocks given CEFs’ diverse portfolios – can sport high leverage of between 30% and 60%.… Read more