The holiday season won’t be so cheery according to Wall Street. Concerns over dismal holiday retail sales have taken the lift out of October’s rally and weighed on the S&P 500.

Wal-Mart (WMT), Amazon.com (AMZN) and Target (TGT) are under the microscope heading into this upcoming Black Friday. But weekly price gyrations don’t matter as much as earnings and dividend growth. We should use short-term concerns about the sector as potential buying opportunities – especially for perennial dividend growers.

So what can we expect from retailers this holiday season?

According to the October U.S. Retail Spending survey – which increased just 0.1 percent – consumers are spending about the same, but slightly less than analysts were expecting.… Read more

Many dividend ETFs are down on the year, and trailing the S&P 500 as well. But dividend-focused strategies tend to outperform the market over the long haul. Which means, in theory, it’s a good time for “set it and forget it” income investors to start new dividend ETF positions or add to new ones.

But there are 100+ ETFs that claim a dividend focus. And believe it or not, many of them have underperformed the market since inception – not good considering their inherent advantage!

Let’s first narrow the field by discussing what types of dividend-payers tend to do the best.… Read more

With the S&P 500’s current yield at just 2%, we have to go beyond the blue chips and search some unpopular sectors to find meaningful dividends.

Sometimes the negative “first-level feelings” on the dogs are justified, and their big payouts are merely yield traps. Other times, we’re rewarded with dividends that are “higher than they should be” thanks to the negative sentiment

Few sectors are as unloved today as energy and natural gas. That’s where I recently uncovered three pipeline plays that are paying high yields that are funded by actual profits.

The case against natural gas has been piling up lately.… Read more

Frantic investors are blindly selling the big dividend payers in an all-out “rate hike panic.” But you’ll usually make money buying into panics rather than selling them. And this time it’s no different.

There are high quality stocks that pay yields of 5-6% or better that should be at the top of your watch list. Conventional wisdom says that they’ll perform poorly in a rising rate environment. That’s a lazy blanket statement from “first-level thinkers” that just hasn’t been the case historically.

If you’re a regular reader, you know that I’ve been eyeing Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) lately.… Read more

The most interesting offering from Big Tech actually isn’t the latest phone, app, platform, watch or tablet – it’s dividends. Tech darlings Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), International Business Machines (IBM) and Cisco (CSCO) are delivering strong earnings and increasingly attractive dividends.

First-level investors usually gravitate towards utilities, energy, and large caps for yield. Few income investors immediately think of big tech. And that’s a shame, because some tech titans are now paying a secure 2-4%. (I highlighted two of them a couple weeks ago).

Where did these big dividends come from? A lack of love from investors. Many older tech firms are transitioning into new products and segments.… Read more

There’s a select, newly flush group of small banks that appear every year. They essentially mint their own pile of money by taking advantage of a financial phenomenon known as a second-step conversion. In the ensuing months and years after the event, management often shovels it back to shareholders in the form of buybacks and dividends.

The “Class of 2016” is getting ready to swing into action, and many of them will reward their shareholders with double-digit returns next year. It’s a simple formula – they’re going to use their extra cash to buy back lots of their cheap shares.

You’re probably familiar with initial public offerings, or IPOs.… Read more