There are, literally, a billion reasons to avoid the energy sector right now.

Hedge funds now own a billion barrels worth of bets that crude oil prices are heading higher. Problem is, these guys are usually wrong – especially when they wager with such conviction!

In April 2014, I warned that then-$103 crude oil was due for a drop. U.S. crude oil inventories were at 5-year highs, yet money managers were “net long” 336,000 contracts on crude oil future. They were doubling down on the goo at the worst possible time.

When oil prices began to roll over, hedgies were forced to liquidate their bad bets in unison.… Read more

Things are tough for contrarian investors these days.

Back in August, for example, I recommended buying financial stocks. It was an easy call to make.

At the time, the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLF) was down 4% from a year earlier, and the worst performers had fallen much further. I specifically saw value in Wells Fargo (WFC), KeyCorp (KEY) and PNC Financial Services (PNC), which had fallen 14.5%, 17.6% and 12.0%, respectively.

I bought heavily into these three stocks at the time, expecting financials to recover over the short term, especially if Trump won the election.

Here’s how they’ve done since then:

Financials Rebound With Gusto

The strong recovery since August has convinced me to back off on financials, since the market has finally seen in these firms what I saw in them last summer.… Read more

With the Trump bump squeezing stocks higher, retirees (and near-retirees) are asking me two questions a lot these days:

Is it still a good time to buy? And if so, what the heck should I buy?

The answer to the first is, undoubtedly, yes.

And it’s no secret what’s behind the second: according to FactSet, this market is trading at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio that hasn’t been seen in 13 years.

Investors Double Down

Source: FactSet

No wonder folks are struggling with what to buy!

One thing I recommend avoiding now is an index fund like the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY).… Read more

Tax season can be a cringe-inducing affair for most investors, who have to fill out their 1040s, 1099s and K-1s with Uncle Sam hovering above, looking for his cut. But for investors who have bought into one of the five high-yielding funds I want to share with you today, this time of year is a friendly reminder of the greatness of municipal bonds and their fat, tax-free yields.

Most investors have money stashed away in bonds of some sort. Often, those bonds will be U.S. Treasury bills (debt issued by the federal government), though frequently, investors will have some exposure to corporate bonds (debt issued by companies).… Read more

Most investors buy stocks and hope they’ll go up in price. They do nothing in the interim to generate cash flow from those stocks while they sit in their portfolio – like writing covered calls.

“Write” what?

I’ll explain. And I’ll also highlight some popular exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and closed-end funds (CEFs) that will help you generate 8% yields or better from this income strategy without actually handling an options contract yourself.

A call option is a contract that gives its buyer the right to purchase a stock from the seller for a certain price within a certain period of time.… Read more

I love passive investing—but not for the reason you might think.

I love it because, as I’ll demonstrate in a moment, it’s caused plenty of stocks to become mispriced, creating opportunities for active stock pickers who do their homework.

This makes the market more of a meritocracy: the people who work harder, smarter and spend more time and energy on their investments can get a higher return than those who buy index funds like the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) and call it a day.

Why?

Because the more people buy VTI and other index products, the more they drive up the prices of all the stocks in that index.… Read more

Today we’re going to head out to one of my favorite hunting grounds for cheap high-yield stocks: the midcap space.

“Wait,” you may be thinking. “Haven’t midcap stocks been on a tear? How can there be any bargains left?”

You’d be right about the first part … but not the second.

To get at why, let’s look at how the benchmark S&P MidCap 400 ETF (MDY) has performed vs. its large-cap cousin, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) in the past year:

Midcaps Soar…

That rise has had a predictable effect on both funds’ dividend yields (because you calculate yield by dividing the annual dividend into the current share price):

…While Yields Shrink

I know—this still doesn’t make midcaps look like an ideal spot to find bargain high-yielders, but hear me out.… Read more

I get it – you want a diversified portfolio that lets you live off dividends alone. And you probably don’t want to spend most of your waking hours worrying about a million tickers either.

Consider exchange-traded funds (ETFs) then, which provide your portfolio with instant diversification through a single purchase. Pick a strategy you like (ie. high yield) and let the fund do the work for you.

Today we’ll highlight five dirt-cheap ETFs that distribute loads of cash … and let you walk away with the lion’s share of income. Now you and I both know that high fees rob you of returns.… Read more

Let’s say you want to lock in a passive retirement income of $80,000 per year.

If you go with what most investors mistakenly see as the safest route, long-term US Treasuries, you’re going to need $3.3 million. That’s because 10-year Treasuries are paying a wimpy 2.4% interest rate today.

Investors who buy Treasuries often shrug off numbers like that. “So what?” they say, adding that Treasuries are about as low-risk as you can get.

Too bad they’re wrong.

If you buy into Treasuries and want to resell them before they mature—perhaps to deal with a big expense that comes out of nowhere—you have a pretty good chance of losing money.… Read more