Wall Street’s pundits love touting the Dividend Aristocrats as the crème de la crème of the income world. I get it. The ability to not only pay, but increase, corporate distributions uninterrupted for two-and-a-half decades is an impressive feat that clearly illustrates financial fortitude and sound fiscal management.

But that doesn’t make all Dividend Aristocrats buys. And in fact, five of them – which I will highlight for you today – are downright dreadful long-term dividend holdings.

When investors think of dangerous dividends, they tend to think of companies whose payouts could evaporate overnight. As well they should – nothing can derail your retirement plans faster than watching the dividends you rely on disappear in a flash.… Read more

If you want to find the best high-yield opportunities on Wall Street, you don’t follow bright neon signs – you turn over rocks.

Years of research has shown that the most widely recommended names are typically overcrowded trades, killing any chance you have at wringing out any value. Worse, analysts’ and pundits’ picks are often so conservative that they actually pose a danger to your retirement by producing sleepy returns and only so-so dividends.

That’s why I love closed-end funds (CEFs) like the three high yielders (between 7% and 9.5%) that I’m going to show you today. They garner no media coverage, so they’re less likely to develop into bubbles.… Read more

When a clock is broken, it’s right twice a day. But when a permabear warns a stock market crash is coming “any day now,” how many times can they be right?

Well, if you’ve been waiting for a crash since the last one, you’ve been waiting for almost a decade. And that just empowers the bears to say it’s inevitable—it’s been so long since the last crash, surely another one is coming soon, right?

Wrong.

Here are three reasons why the stock market is set to keep going up.

1) Earnings Growth Is Strong

In the first quarter, analysts predicted 9% earnings growth for S&P 500 companies, and that helped the benchmark SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VOO) rise over 8% in the first half of 2017.… Read more

Today I’m going to show you how to get a livable income stream from a $300,000 nest egg—while growing your savings at the same time.

Sounds impossible, right?

Wrong.

What’s more, we’re going to pull it off using just six funds. When we’re done, we’ll end up with a simple, diversified portfolio that throws off a nice, steady 7.9% dividend yield!

And if you’re worried that this outsized yield could come at the cost of a weak total return, don’t be, because these funds have delivered 12% per year over the past decade.

Before I get into these six funds, let me show you what numbers like these can mean for you: if we start with an upfront investment of $305,000 in this portfolio and leave it alone for 10 years, we can expect our capital to explode to nearly $1 million in a decade.… Read more

Today I’m going to show you a proven way to collect $5,094 in cash, on average, every month—without buying a single stock, bond or fund.

In fact, you won’t have to buy anything at all. (I’ll show you precisely how this works in a moment.)

That amounts to a nice $61,000-a-year income stream, easily enough for you to live on pretty well anywhere in America. And if you pick one of the cheapest corners of the country (like Indianapolis, say, where the cost of living is 16% below the national average), it’s a fortune!

Beyond the Obvious

It’s certainly way better than trying to squeak by on the 1.9% your typical S&P 500 stock pays—and that payout slips a little more each day as stocks march higher.… Read more

What exactly does the Catholic Church think about dividends?

A lot, as it turns out. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops outlines a number of principles and policies in a roughly 6,000-word document you can find here. Highlights include:

• Protecting human life
• Protecting human dignity
• Reducing arms production
• Pursuing economic justice
• Protecting the environment
• Encouraging corporate responsibility

Also the USCCB has dual-mandate that requires “a reasonable return on its investments and is required to operate in a fiscally sound, responsible and accountable manner.” In other words, just like you and I, the Catholic Church expects returns.

The Global X S&P 500 Catholic Values ETF (CATH) invests in hundreds of S&P 500 components that qualify according to the USCCB’s stated values.… Read more

Something tragic happened at the start of this month—but it’s such a familiar tragedy that no one should have been surprised.

If you held the PIMCO CA Municipal Income III Fund (PZC), however, I bet you were surprised—and now you might be panicking. A closed-end fund (CEF) that was soaring for months all of a sudden crashed, going from being up 12% year-to-date to down 2.8%:

Look Out Below

Until July 3, PZC was one of the best-performing municipal-bond funds in the world. While the CEF Insider Tax-Free Bond Index was up 6.1%, PZC had nearly doubled it, gaining a stunning 11.6%.… Read more

Most of your friends are going to struggle to make any money in U.S. stocks for the next five to seven years. They’re battling not one, not two, but three major headwinds:

1. Low yields,
2. High valuations, and
3. Rising interest rates.

Historically, half of the stock market’s returns (or more, depending on the study you believe) have come from dividends. With the S&P 500 paying just 1.9%, the math isn’t promising.

An expensive market is also problematic because it makes rising multiples unlikely. The S&P index trades for 25-times earnings today – where can it really go from here but down?

Finally, rising interest rates are a concern for many income investors.… Read more

Here’s a harsh dose of reality: If you ignore dividend growth when you select your income investments, you are actively reducing the quality of your own retirement.

Today, I’m going to show you how you can use dividend growth to reap safe 12% annual returns by looking for just a handful of qualities in a company, but first, I’m going to show you something that should make at least a few of you sick:

You might not recognize it, but this is what losing money looks like.

Investors over the past few years have been gifted one of the mildest environments for inflation in modern history.… Read more

If you’re like most folks, you’re about to put your portfolio on autopilot as the lazy days of summer roll in.

It’s an easy trap to fall into, but you must not take the bait, as I’ll explain in a moment. Later on, I’ll show you two hidden dividend-growers that should be on your buy list now. Both are ready to double their payouts in short order!

First, back to the season at hand.

I can see why most folks check out around now. After all, July has been the best month for stocks over the last 89 years, and August hasn’t been too bad, either.… Read more