13 Sky-High Yields of 7%-Plus: 4 Bombs, 9 Buys

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What do most exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and many blue-chip stocks have in common?

They’re big, they’re popular with Wall Street pundits … and they don’t deliver nearly as much income as investors need to retire.

Not even close.

I want to share some ugly and eye-opening numbers with you about the skinflint ETF industry. I recently dug into the 100 most popular funds by assets under management, and here’s what I found:


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Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) shattered growth records in 2017, with inflows topping $464 billion last year. The global ETF market now boasts more than $4.5 trillion in assets, and a large part of the appeal has been driven by dirt-cheap fees.

But many of these fund’s fees are “cheap for a reason.” We’ll talk about five today that lure investors in with appealing current yields – but then proceed to dump their dumb money out the back door.

These five funds may have sweet dividend yields, but they have produced sour total return results thanks to one fundamental flaw or another.

ETRACS Linked to the Wells Fargo Business Development Company Index ETN (BDCS)
Dividend Yield: 8.7%

One of the most basic appeals of the exchange-traded fund is the cheap diversification they provide.…
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Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tend to have low fee structures. And when investors try to combine ETFs with their high yield needs, they usually get what they pay for.

ETFs, simply put, are often “dumb money.” Their current yields may look good, but their long-term strategies are usually flawed.

Here are five funds paying up to 8.4% that are too dumb to trust with your retirement money.

iShares International Preferred Stock ETF (IPFF)
Yield: 4.1%
Expenses: 0.55%

International dividend stock funds typically sport similar if not higher yields than their domestic brethren, so you would imagine there would be a similar advantage in foreign preferred stocks.…
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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.…
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