“Dogs of the Dow” Update: Buy These 5.9% Dividends?

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“Dogs of the Dow” Update: Buy These 5.9% Dividends?

I dig dividend stocks that keep a low profile. Forget the front-page financial headlines. I’d prefer to own a high paying stock as it’s making its way from page 16 up to page 1!

That’s when the real money is made, and the highest yields are banked. These under-covered stocks give us a “two-fer” benefit. A lack of media and analyst coverage allows you and I to exploit dirt-cheap prices, unlocking far more potential than if we chased them once everyone else started to notice them.

Better still, low prices in unexplored areas of the market equal juicy yields. Imagine squeezing 10.1% from the real estate biz.… Read more

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5 Stocks Set to Roar Into 2021 (and 8 Laggards About to Crash)

Sometimes, picking the best contrarian stocks can be fairly straightforward.

For instance, back in early spring, it seemed obvious to anyone who went a bit deeper than the daily headlines to see that the market wasn’t giving tech stocks their due, given its importance during the lockdown and its potential for big post–COVID-19 growth.

So in April I wrote an article that highlighted the Columbia Seligman Premium Tech Fund (STK), a closed-end fund (CEF) primed to benefit from surging online shopping, rising mobile data use and the fast shift toward working from home. Plus, STK yielded an outsized 9.4%, so you were getting a large part of your profits in dividend cash.… Read more

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5 Massive Dividends (up to 8.5%!) From S&P 500 Stocks You Know Well

In normal times, we contrarians are stuck combing the market’s backwaters—REITs, closed-end funds (CEFs) and the like—in our hunt for outsized dividends.

But, of course, these are not normal times.

This crisis has flipped the script. Now we can get the same big payouts but with much less work. In fact, we can get them from the same stocks you’ll find in any American’s portfolio! This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and it can’t last.

Fishing Close to Shore

The last time I saw a situation like this was in March 2009, days before the S&P 500 bottomed in the financial crisis.… Read more

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Is Your Next Dividend Hike on Track? 39 Payers Yielding Up to 48%

These 39 stocks are supposed to hike their dividends soon. How many of these raises are still going to happen?

The first-quarter earnings season is approaching, and that typically means a weekly flow of companies announcing upgrades to their regular payouts. Indeed, I’m about to show you 39 stocks, yielding up to 47.9%, that are on the schedule and expected to deliver dividend raises over the next couple of months.

However the sudden bear market has thrown a gigantic monkey wrench into this quarter’s dividend routine. Dividends are dropping like flies.

… Read more

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Dogs of the Dow for 2020: Dividend Bargains, or Yield Traps?

The New Year is here, which means it’s once again time to revisit a contrarian (and income) investing tradition: The “Dogs of the Dow.”

This simple yet famous dividend strategy involves buying the 10 highest yielders in the 30-component Dow Jones Industrial Average at the beginning of each year.

It’s an income play, sure, but this strategy also has to do with value. The idea: Truly strong blue-chip stocks rarely become “obsolete,” so high yields—often driven by lower prices in the prior year—are just a signal that the stocks are oversold and due to bounce back.

It’s a win-win, in theory.… Read more

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Weekly Market Summary: Riding Wave of Momentum Into Earnings Season

The S&P 500 snapped an eight-session winning streak on Tuesday, but U.S. stocks still have strong momentum heading into the first-quarter earnings season.

The index flirted with the 2,900 level this week, which is a price that we haven’t seen since last October. One big change since then is that average U.S. earnings showed 20%-plus year-over-year growth in the first three quarters of 2018 and now we’re staring at the first quarterly earnings decline in the S&P 500 in three years.

The quarterly reports we’ll see over the next few weeks will go a long way to determining if the recent momentum can continue.… Read more

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8 Dividend Dumpster Fires to Sell Right Now

A stock’s yield is only as good as its cash flow because, after all, a dividend is nothing more than a promise from a company.

CenturyLink (CTL) recently reminded us of this. Its promised $0.54 per share dividend exceeded its ability to pay. The firm’s payout ratio of 130% – the percentage of profits that it was paying as dividends – was an absurd overpromise that couldn’t last forever:

CenturyLink’s Payout Promise Was Always on Borrowed Time

CEO Jeffrey Storey insisted his team remained “committed to and confident in our ability to maintain the dividend.” I understood the commitment, but questioned the confidence – taking on debt to pay dividends is a losing game.… Read more

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Week in Review: U.S. Markets Quiet During Short Week as Government Shutdown Temporarily Ended

The broader stock market averages digested recent gains this week, as trading activity was shortened by the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday.

Trade talks with China appear to have reached a stalemate, as U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Thursday that the two sides were “miles and miles” apart from settling trade issues. Back at home, the Federal government shutdown found a temporary solution on Friday. The deal re-opens government operations through Feb. 15, as Congress and the White House will continue to discuss border security.

Earnings Season in Full Force

Despite the holiday, it was a busy week for earnings.… Read more

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4 Future Dividend Aristocrats with 87% Upside

What’s the best way to add the consistent income growth of the Dividend Aristocrats to your portfolio without paying the “royalty premium” of these popular, well-covered stocks?

Buy ‘em while they’re young.

Right now, there are a handful of stocks I want to show you today that are knocking on the door of Dividend Aristocrats membership. We’re talking only one to three years shy of the 25-year benchmark of consecutive annual dividend increases.

That means they still boast more than two decades’ worth of higher payouts, which is plenty of proof that they’ve got bulletproof financials and put shareholders’ interests on a pedestal.…
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Dividend “Century Aristocrats”: Ranking 5 Buys Today

Today we’re going to rank the longest-lasting dividends on the planet – five stocks that have written checks to shareholders for at least a century.

Dividends don’t get more secure than that.

Think about what the world was like in 1917. The United States was in the midst of World War I. Girl Scout cookies and Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars were in their infancy. And the Dow Jones Industrial Average made several attempts on the 100 mark.

Yes, 100.

Since then, the United States has suffered 16 recessions and a pair of depressions, including the granddaddy of them all, the Great Depression of 1929-1933.…
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