1 Safe 7% Dividend You Could Hold Forever (and 1 Yield Trap About to Spring)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Today I want to show you how you can retire on $405,000—and with just five buys, too! Put together, these five stocks and funds hand you a 7.4%-yielding portfolio that will pay you reliably for decades.

First, though, let’s quickly run through how our “5-buy” portfolio will work—and how it proves the so-called “experts,” who say you need a million dollars or more to clock out—are dead wrong.

A Million-Dollar Retirement … for $405K!?

To be smack in the middle of income in America, you need to bring in about $30,000 per year. So, at a 7.4% yield, you’d need to invest $405,000.… Read more

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I run into a lot of investors who think retirement investing is a two-act play.

In Act 1, when you’re younger, you try to balloon your nest egg with high-risk growth stocks that pay little (and often no) dividends.

Then, in Act 2, as you near—and enter—retirement, you pivot to the big dividends you need to pay your bills.

Trouble is, this approach exposes you to far too much risk, so today I’m going to show you a better way.

Your Best Play: Big Dividends and Growth—Right Now

I’m talking about 10 funds that can hand you dividends up to 9.8% right now, plus annual returns of 10% or more.… Read more

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I want to show you 10 funds that yield up to 9.4%—and that you should sell now (or steer clear of if you don’t own them).

Of course, near-10% yields are attractive, and I often see attractive funds yielding as much as (and more than) the 10 funds I’ll reveal in a second. But sometimes a big yield is too good to be true, and that’s the case here.

The reason I’m saying this now? These funds have been on a tear in the last few months, which is far out of character for both them and their asset class.

I’m talking about utilities funds.… Read more

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It’s easy to see why investors love utilities:

  1. Low volatility
  2. High yields

But there’s a problem: recent scares like the inverted yield curve mean some utilities, and utility funds, have gotten ahead of themselves and are more prone to a pullback than most folks think. (The three 7%+-yielding closed-end funds (CEFs) I’ll show you shortly top this “overpriced” list.)

The worst part is, many people think utilities are underbought, because the benchmark Utilities Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLU) is up 8.3% year-to-date, half the 16% gain of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY).

But that’s recency bias. Stretch the timeline to 12 months and things look very different:

Utilities Get Pricey

Interest-Rate Pause Should Boost Utilities.Read more

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Monday’s major jump in stocks is the beginning of a trend that will catch a lot of investors by surprise: fundamental strength thanks to trade war fears abating.

We aren’t out of the woods yet, as Tuesday showed us. While the market cheered the tentative cease-fire between Xi and Trump on Monday, the lack of details and confusion hit the market on Tuesday.

And that’s a good thing, because it’s set up investors for an opportunity to buy equities cheap before the relief rally around the corner.

Trade Ceasefire Opens Buy Window …

The way I see it, the trade-war ceasefire is likely the beginning of a deal coming down the pipe in the next three months.… Read more

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If you’re still fearful about stocks as we pick up the pieces from the market’s grim October, let me ease your mind with one chart:

Stocks Still a Long-Term Winner

As you can see, that’s the market’s return over the last 10 years. As you can also see, stocks have returned nearly 2.5 times a person’s original investment in just a decade! Few other investments can make that claim.

The real problem? Income.

The average S&P 500 stock pays a lousy 1.9%, but let’s say you need 8% of your portfolio in monthly income to pay your bills in retirement. If you buy the popular SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and withdraw 8% monthly, you’ll be forced to sell in a falling market like the one we’ve seen.… Read more

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