If you hold any of these five risky REITs, you should sell them immediately. And put that money into two recession-proof bargains (paying up to 8%) that we’ll discuss shortly.

REITs aren’t always as safe as their dividends appear on paper. Consider Investors Real Estate Trust (IRET), which slashed its dividend by nearly half late last year. This wasn’t a sudden decision – it followed years of share declines as falling oil prices crushed rents across IRET’s markets.

IRET has now lost 40% in four years and seen its high-single-digit yield reduced to less than 5%. Even IRET’s brief recovery after the dividend cut has withered away, and shares are off double digits in 2017.… Read more

Worried about a pullback? I don’t blame you. But you shouldn’t stash your portfolio in cash when you can bank this 10% dividend and be protect yourself from a drop in the stock market.

Rather than buying stocks for their payouts and hoping they don’t crash, you can extract more money from them – and protect your downside risk – by “writing” covered calls. And don’t worry, we’re not going to get into an Options 101 course here.

I’m going to explain the strategy to you – and then recommend my favorite fund which is easy to buy, and will do all of the heavy lifting for you.… Read more

There’s a secret way to make a killing in the stock market, and one superstar investor is jumping in with over $1 billion.

You may not have heard of Boaz Weinstein, but he’s become a legend on Wall Street. Back in 2012, he made a ton of money betting against J.P. Morgan’s London Whale—whose name is now linked with risky, poor investments.

Seeing the London Whale’s ridiculous trading strategies, Weinstein bet aggressively against the Whale—and won big. J.P. Morgan lost $2 billion because of this one trader, causing the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, to admit that the firm had lost the money due to “egregious mistakes” in trading.… Read more

Is there a bond bubble? There’s certainly more froth than not, with investors recklessly reaching for the riskiest of yields.

But there’s one last 10% dividend on the board worthy of our consideration. It’s available thanks to investors’ misunderstanding (and laziness) – we’ll discuss details in a minute.

But first, let’s review three key rules that will help us navigate this budding bond bubble.

Rule #1: Maximize Your Upside

Our favorite second-level thinker Howard Marks noted in an op-ed for Barron’s that Netflix (NFLX) bond buyers – who recently scooped up €1.3 billion of Eurobonds paying just 3.625% – might have exposed themselves to significant downside without much upside.… Read more

Today I’m going to show you three funds that are clobbering the market while throwing off a princely income stream.

These three funds have all gained 30% so far in 2017, even though the market is up a more modest (but still solid) 10%. And thanks to their skilled management teams and the exploding corners of the market they play in, they still have plenty of room to run.

The best part: between them, they pay an average 6.5% dividend! And thanks to their strong outperformance, those payouts are going to keep flowing to shareholders.

So you could buy all three of these funds, get a huge passive income stream now and position yourself for strong capital gains, thanks to the steady growth in these funds’ net asset values (or the value of their underlying holdings).… Read more

If you’re looking for a place to park some fresh cash now—and open it up to 100%+ upside—I have three words for you:

Buy dividend growth.

I’ve told you before how a portfolio of stout dividend growers is the best way to clobber the market in the long run.

The best dividend champs do double duty: fatten our pockets with surging payouts while hitting the gas on R&D spending. That locks in their competitive edge … setting the stage for even higher dividends!

It’s the kind of vicious cycle I love, and most folks pay far too little attention to.

Below I’ll give you 5 reasons why now is the perfect time to buy dividend-growth stocks, and why I’m personally doubling down on these elite companies.… Read more

Many investors mistakenly believe that the world of private equity and its home-run potential are hopelessly out of reach. Privately held PE firms are difficult to access and often require seven-figure sums to start. Plus the handful of publicly traded PE companies are organized as limited partnerships – which means a hassle come tax time.

But there’s a promising group of easy-to-buy private equity firms hiding in plain sight: business development companies (BDCs).

And BDCs are dividend behemoths. In fact, I’ll highlight three today paying up to 9%!

Business development companies are the lifeblood of American small business, providing financing to small and mid-sized business in many instances when banks and other financiers consider the risk to be too great.… Read more

If you invest outside the US, you’re probably pretty happy with 2017 so far.

Heck, even if you’ve stayed inside America’s borders, you’re looking a nice 10% return through the first 7 months, going by the performance of the S&P 500.

(And speaking of the US, my colleague Brett Owens recently revealed 4 great all-American stocks yielding up to 10%. You can get their names by clicking here.)

But those who play in the global sandbox have seen some truly spectacular returns, especially folks who hold closed-end funds that invest in foreign stocks. In fact, the CEF Insider Foreign Sub-Index is up a whopping 20.1% since the start of the year—and it isn’t slowing down.… Read more

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are now a core source of income for investors and retirees. REITs represent more than $1.1 trillion worth of equity market capitalization. Their popularity has soared – the amount spent trading REITs is nearly double what it was just 10 years ago.

The downside of fame? There aren’t nearly as many hidden gems in the sector as there used to be. At this point, companies like Simon Property Group (SPG), Realty Income (O) and even Public Storage (PSA) are widely known and covered – and their valuations show it.

But I have my eye on four lesser-discussed REITs that still have a little something special to add to the REIT space.… Read more

If you’ve been on the sidelines as this market grinds higher, you’re probably suffering a severe case of FOMO (fear of missing out).

It’s a terrible feeling, but today I’m going to cure you of it entirely, because it’s not too late to jump in!

The key is to zero in on a group of investments known as closed-end funds.

I’ll tell you about them—and introduce you to 5 attractive CEFs—in a moment. But for now, here’s the upshot: these overlooked, easy-to-buy funds are beating the market, but some are still priced at big discounts to their “true” value.

That means you’re not only going to get a strong return here, but you’ll also get a lot of income, too.… Read more