This Is the Worst Advice You Could Follow Now

The Contrary Investing Report

Investing and Trading News, with a Contrarian, Sarcastic Twist!

This Is the Worst Advice You Could Follow Now

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.…
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6 CEFs to Buy for Safe 7.9%+ Yields and Upside

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.…
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How to Make $5,094 a Month Without Buying Stocks

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.…
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5 Dividend Growth Plays Fit for A Pontiff

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.…
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This Popular Fund Just Cratered 13% … and It Will Go Lower

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%.…
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The Simple (& Safe) Way to Earn 12% for Life From Stocks

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.…
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The Key to Finding the Perfect Dividend Growth Stocks

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.…
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The Worst Place to Invest Now (and 2 Buys for Quick 100%+ Gains)

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.…
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Busted: The Biggest Myth in Investing

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “There’s a recession every seven years.”

It’s the kind of financial folk wisdom that sounds right but is, in fact, all wrong. But that doesn’t stop influential people from touting it as truth.

Morgan Stanley, for example, was warning investors that the seven-year cycle was a serious risk back in 2015. And they were wrong.

The world’s GDP rose 3.2% in 2015 and 3.1% in 2016, according to the International Monetary Fund. The US didn’t do too badly, either, growing 2.6% and 1.6% in those years. So far, 2% looks like an easy target for 2017.…
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These 7% Yields Come With a Government Guarantee

Something strange happened recently, and it’s set up a terrific—and almost totally overlooked—profit opportunity for you.

What is it?

The European Union is going to ensure that people who held bonds in two recently failed banks (Veneto Banca and Popolare di Vicenza) will get a 100% bailout.

Now unless you’re holding these specific bonds, you’re probably wondering what this could possibly have to do with you.

Stick with me—I’ll get to that in a second. First, back to the bailout.

The EU’s move isn’t actually all that surprising. We’ve seen governments bail out bondholders many times since 2007 (and the EU has been doing even more bond bailouts in the last couple years).…
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