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

I get a lot of questions from readers about high-paying “preferred shares.” And most of these queries have one thing in common: worry!

You see, many of these folks are concerned that preferreds—known for their outsized dividend yields funded by safe cash flows—will get swamped as interest rates rise.

So today I’m going to show you why you can set these fears aside. Further on, I’ll reveal a preferred-stock fund that lets you rope in an outsized 7.3% cash dividend and price upside, too.

First, I should say that preferred shares aren’t alone in stoking investor fears. Other high-yield investments are, too, such as real estate trusts (REITs) and utilities.… Read more

If you’ve filled up your car lately, I don’t have to tell you that oil prices have come back to life after years in the doldrums.

So today I’m going to give you 3 terrific funds that let you take back the power. Each one pays 6.5%+ dividends and is set to pack big price gains as oil resumes its rise (and it will).

An Income Gusher Where No One Bothers to Look

It’s rare to hear the words “oil” and “6.5%+ dividends” in the same sentence. The truth is, many energy stocks don’t give investors an income stream, while a lot of energy funds are fundamentally flawed.… Read more

Do you own the next GE? I’m talking about five dividends that are not as sacred as their shareholders mistakenly believe. We’ll review them in a minute.

First, the warning signs. Many investors were kicked in the gut by General Electric (GE) last year, no thanks to pundits who ignored numerous red flags and encouraged people to buy GE and its historically generous yield. Sure, 5% isn’t “high,” but in a sleepy industrial like General Electric, that’s certainly attractive at a glance.

It also was downright dangerous.

Anyone keeping tabs on the all-important payout ratios for General Electric’s dividend had to see the writing on the wall.… 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. The problem is, 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

By now you may have heard about the huge dividends and soaring price gains offered by closed-end funds (CEFs).

But here’s something that will probably surprise you: you can lock in even bigger—and safer—income streams (I’m talking 7%+ dividends), plus massive upside with smaller CEFs.

I know that sounds counterintuitive, and quite the opposite of what happens with stocks; small-cap companies rarely pay dividends and can collapse overnight.

Go Big the Small Way

The key is to go with small CEFs sporting portfolios backstopped by large cap stocks and whip-smart management teams, like the 3 funds (paying up to 10.1% in cash each) I’ll show you in a moment.… Read more

If you want to clobber the stock market – and double your money every two or three years – then buying companies with accelerating dividends is an absolute must.

And I’ve got good news for you: there’s never been a better time to buy them.

That’s because dividend growth is on a sugar high: research firm IHS Markit recently predicted that global dividends would jump 10% this year—a new record.

What’s more, if you’re looking to grow your nest egg fast, you’re in luck, because accelerating dividends are the beating heart of my personal 3-step system for banking 12% annual returns for life.… Read more

It’s something I hear from readers all the time: “Brett, the 7%+ dividends you recommend in the Contrarian Income Report service are well and good, but are dividends that high really safe to invest in? I’m worried about a dividend cut.”

The answer?

They are absolutely safe—so go ahead and enjoy the outsized cash payouts delivered by our Contrarian Income Report selections, which I’ve carefully chosen and safety-checked to let you retire on a $500k nest egg (and maybe even less).

And for stocks outside of our portfolio, you just need to take a few quick steps to stay off the rocks.… Read more

The stock market has just started recovering from its early-February lows—and there are 3 ridiculously cheap funds set to jump even higher while paying massive dividends.

Before I show them to you, let’s talk a bit about why the market is set to go higher.

Right now, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) is up 4.8% for 2018, but more importantly, it’s still off its 2018 high, reached in early January—and it’s only started to show signs of consistent recovery from February’s low in the last few weeks:

A Steadying Market

There are a lot of reasons for this, but the most important happened in April—just at the start of the upward move in stocks in the chart above.… Read more

Most people are chasing big dividend payers right now in this “3% world” we live in. Meanwhile, a small group of “hidden yield” stocks are quietly handing smart investors growing income streams PLUS annual returns of 12%, 17.3%, or more.

Let’s talk about how to find these stocks, and bank 12% returns or better every single year, by following a simple two-step formula.

See, everyone wants dividend stocks with good current yields. It’s easy to scan a newspaper or financial website and pick out the stocks that are paying 3%, 4%, 8% or whatever number you might consider “good.”

Yet that’s NOT the right way to pick dividend stocks.… Read more