Make This Investing Mistake, Lose 54% (or More) of Your Money

Our Archive

Search completed

At my CEF Insider service, a fund’s discount to net asset value (NAV, or the value of its underlying portfolio) is one of the first things we look at when deciding whether to issue a buy call.

That’s because it can tip us off to a bargain-priced CEF, just like price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios do for regular stocks. But as with P/E ratios, the discount to NAV is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to making a buy decision.

The Discount to NAV Is Just the First Step in Our Research …

It’s easy to see why some investors put too much weight on the discount to NAV, though.… Read more

Read More

Vanilla investors are freaking out that Jerome Powell & Co. won’t cut rates right away.

Who cares if we’re buying safe yields up to 11.0% like the three we’re about to highlight. This trio is positioned to benefit from an upcoming bull run in utility stocks:

“To be sure, long rates might hover around these levels for a bit. But the Fed’s rate hikes will eventually add up, and the much-talked-about recession will arrive. That will result in lower interest rates, both on the ‘short’ end (controlled by the Fed) and the ‘long’ (determined by the 10-year Treasury rate). As rates fall, the prices of bonds and ‘bond proxies,’ like utilities, will pop.”

Read more

Read More

If you watch cable TV or visit financial websites, you no doubt hear about “overpriced” stocks and funds all the time.

A pundit will jump on TV and say something like “Tech is overvalued.” So, by extension, a tech ETF like the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK) is overpriced, right?

Not so—at least in a technical sense. An ETF like XLK can be overpriced, but ETFs rarely are.

A fund like XLK collects money from investors and socks it away in stocks. In XLK’s case, we’re talking about big-name techs like Microsoft (MSFT), NVIDIA (NVDA) and Apple (AAPL). But with ETFs, the price you pay tends to be close to how much it would cost to buy all of those stocks separately.… Read more

Read More

If retirement gets any better than monthly dividend payers then, well, I don’t want to know about it.

Seriously. I’m a simple guy! Pay me every 30 days and I’ll smile and shut up.

And I’ll grin even wider when my monthly dividends add up to 8.7%, 14% or—get this—19.5% per year.

These are not typos. They are real yields from actual stocks and yes, they are spectacular. We’ll highlight them in a moment. But first, let’s review the magic of monthly dividends.

Bills keep showing up every month. Active paychecks from our jobs do not, which is why we rely on payouts.… Read more

Read More

When it comes to high-yield closed-end funds (CEFs), I’m a big fan of the “three Ds”: discounts, diversification and—of course—dividends!

These days, a “3-D” portfolio is a snap to put together, with CEF dividends at multi-year highs and oversold discounts everywhere across the asset class.

Below, we’ll look at a three-fund, bargain-priced “3-D” CEF portfolio you can buy today. It yields 8% now and gives you the diversification you need to reduce your volatility—and collect your payouts in peace.

I know that preaching diversification at a time when bonds, stocks and everything else is down might sound a bit outdated, but over time, this time-tested strategy always pays off.… Read more

Read More

Patience is the key to being a successful contrarian investor.

We buy when fear is widespread. Bear markets are our friends. Let’s sit back and let the market’s valuations come down to us.

I wrote very recently that the market is this close to sending out a market-wide buy signal. Let’s get ready to back up the truck.

Today, we’ll discuss targets for retirement income yielding a ludicrous 12.9%—after all, a self-sustaining portfolio that allows you to live off dividends alone can give you enormous peace of mind once you’re past your working years.

And if those dividends land in your mailbox or account every 30 days or so, matching your monthly bills…well, that’s even better.… Read more

Read More

Imagine two closed-end funds (CEFs) that both yield upwards of 7%. Sounds great, right? Buy a bit of both and get $58.33 per month for every $10,000 you invest. Put in $500K and you’ve got a middle-class income dropping into your account without you having to do a thing.

While that’s a great way to achieve financial independence, we CEF investors know it’s not as easy as searching out a couple of 7% yielders and buying them. We need to go deeper.

While there are over a hundred CEFs yielding 7% or more right now, their quality varies widely. Some are yield traps that will drain your capital with lousy price performance over time, more than offsetting any dividend cash they pay you.… Read more

Read More

The Federal Reserve is finally beginning to admit that it’s here and, at the moment, it’s spectacular. Chairman Jay Powell is still sticking with his “it’s only transitory” story, at least for now. Mr. and Ms. Market were spooked for a moment, until they remembered that money printing flows directly into the stock market.

So, we dividend investors continue our hunt for safe, meaningful yields amidst this mania-of-sorts that has enveloped everything from tech to lumber to crypto to big tech again. We’ll discuss five safe utility dividends—paying up to 9.9%!—in a moment.

First, let’s review the agency’s acclaimed “dot plot” which showed not only that the central bank was now expecting rate hikes by 2023, but that we’d get a pair of them.… Read more

Read More

I’ve been hearing from a lot of readers who are sitting on some nice gains this year—and now they’re wondering if it’s time to sell.

Should you?

As with so many other things in 2020, it depends. What are you planning on selling? With many closed-end funds (CEFs), this is the time to buy more, as they haven’t fully priced in the vaccine- and stimulus-fueled recovery we’re likely to see in 2021. But with some CEFs, there are plenty of reasons to consider taking some money off the table.

Today we’re going to zero in on three such funds. They boast attractive portfolio holdings and high dividend yields—more than 8% in one case.… Read more

Read More

I’m going to show you a dividend portfolio that gets you an incredible 9.5% payout—and you won’t have to take on stomach-churning risk (which, let’s face it, no one’s keen on doing now) to get it.

Imagine what a 9.5% dividend could mean. Take a $300,000 portfolio and you’ve suddenly got $2,375 in passive monthly income. A million bucks? You’re talking about almost $8,000 a month—miles ahead of the $1,500 a month you’d get if you just put it in an S&P 500 index fund.

Here’s the kicker: the investments in this five-fund portfolio, all closed-end funds (CEFs), invest in the same companies that make up the S&P 500.… Read more

Read More

Categories