Skip the Blue Chip Cheapskates and Snag 8% Yield Instead

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Skip the Blue Chip Cheapskates and Snag 8% Yield Instead

When it comes to low-risk, dividend investing, many investors prefer dominant megacaps like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Apple (AAPL) or Microsoft (MSFT). That’s mostly because they subscribe to the notion that these stable corporations will be here many years from now.

That may be true. However, stability alone doesn’t count for much. A good dividend stock has to have… well, good dividends.

And the sad reality is this trio of big-name stocks offers a meager dividend that averages less than 1.5%.

That’s just table scraps. Just consider that recent survey results show that Americans on average think they need $1.25 million to retire comfortably… But even with that substantial nest egg, you would generate just $18,750 if you invested in these three stocks.… Read more

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How to Make $71,000 to $149,000 Annually From Large-Cap Stocks

Vanilla investors are selling. Which means we income-focused contrarians are buying.

Our goal, after all, is to retire on dividends. So why would we run from the biggest dividends that Mr. and Ms. Market have presented us in years?

Yields, yields, yields. We recently discussed 29 income funds yielding more than 8%.

How about stocks? Glad you asked. Let’s chat about 16 sweet large-cap cash-machine stocks paying up to 15%.

If you didn’t catch it, I recently chatted with Moe Ansari on his Market Wrap program. You can read more about it here, but in short, I said the time to sell was over—we’re flush with cash and ready to buy.… Read more

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This “Antifragile” Sin Stock Pays 8.4% with Continued Upside in 2022

Statistician and trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb published his book “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” in 2007 – just months before the global financial crisis and Great Recession hit full swing. In this, and in other writings, he explores the importance of preparing for the unexpected.

After a brutal year or so on Wall Street, I recently went back to Taleb’s works. They offer some very important lessons on resilience and risk, and I highly recommend them.

But since most people prefer simple, real-world examples to a homework assignment, let me give you the Reader’s Digest version – using tobacco giant Altria Group Inc.… Read more

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25 Dividend Stocks That Have Broken Out to 52-Week Highs

We contrarians don’t normally buy dividend stocks high. But when we do, we sell them higher.

These 25 dividend stocks we’re about to discuss are hitting new 52-week highs. This is notable because the market-at-large is falling apart. Which means they are on the “right side” of one or more current trends.

Considering the world is a much different place than it was just two months ago, this is notable. There has been a global trend change.

Our Federal Reserve is sopping up money instead of printing it. Sky-high inflation has backed the Federal Reserve into a corner, with no recourse but to start drastically raising rates and engaging other quantitative tightening measures.… Read more

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22 Dividend Stocks for $68,400 in Annual Income

If you’re as nervous about the 2022 financial scene as I am, we should take this holiday week to review 22 reliable dividends. I’m talking about generous payers that are prepared for any market, bull or bear.

In a market where liquidity is drying up fast, sign me up for safe dividends plus additional profits. The asset price “fuel” that our Federal Reserve has provided since March 2020 is disappearing. Fed Chairman Jay Powell is being forced by inflation numbers to reduce the massive cash the Fed has been providing the financial markets.

So, let’s talk about 22 stocks with sizable and stable dividends averaging 6.8% that can double, triple, maybe even quadruple your portfolio yield overnight.… Read more

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Wall Street’s 2021 Dividend Dogs: Buy, Hold or Sell?

Exactly who is retiring on the income from safe bonds in 2021?

You might remember when, once upon a time, the 10-year Treasury was a source of acceptable retirement yield:

  • Thirty years ago, we could get 7% or more for sitting on high-quality U.S. debt,
  • Twenty years ago, we could still gather 6%,
  • Even a decade ago, we were pocketing a respectable 4%.

Today? We can’t even collect a lousy 1% yield!

Buying Treasury Bonds? Congrats—You’re Broke!

Put a million bucks into 10-year Treasuries and we’re banking just $9,500 per year in income. That’s below poverty levels. Yikes.

Things aren’t any better on the stock side.… Read more

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Buy This, Not That: These 7%+ Alternatives Crush High Yielding Stocks

The market’s fall pullback is starting to reverse itself, but don’t worry: there are still bargain dividend payers yielding 7.4%+ dividends to be had out there.

But investing (along with everything in our lives!) has changed. You simply won’t get safe, high payouts by clutching to old habits and buying big-name, high-yielding S&P 500 stocks. The real dividend bargains are in closed-end funds (CEFs), which give you higher payouts, greater safety and often better returns over the long haul.

To show you what I mean, let’s line up three S&P 500 “dividend darlings” against the CEF competition and see how they compare.… Read more

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4 Market-Shattering Yields: 2 Contenders, 2 Pretenders

A blue-chip dividend portfolio pays about 2% today. Put a million bucks into a bucket of these stocks and you’ll bank just $20,000 in yearly dividends. That’s barely extra change–on a million invested!

There’s a better way. I prefer to focus on stocks and funds that simply aren’t as familiar as the big names to most investors. They do offer growth potential. But most importantly, they don’t sacrifice yield for perceived safety. In fact, they yield roughly 3x to 4x the blue-chip stocks, providing a lot more retirement-income cushion in years where the market stalls.

Most people love the idea of this Perfect Income Portfolio, yet millions of retirees across the country find themselves piled into the same group of overowned, overpriced blue chips because the “traditional wisdom” says that’s what retirement is supposed to look like.… Read more

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5 Cash Cow Stocks Yielding Up to 10.8%

Sometimes investors forget that dividends are funded by actual cash flows.

Consider General Electric (GE), whose outsized yield tempted investors to mistakenly buy shares in this “blue chip” as disaster was unfolding. The stock losses started well before the actual dividend cut and continued on from there:

(Accounting) Imagination at Work

This focus on yield rather than cash happens too often. It’s what prompted me to warn readers about the sky-high yield of Frontier Communications (FTR) a year ahead of its 2017 cut:

A Broken Telecom (and Broken Dividend)

The “not enough cash” problem also prompted me to sound the alarm on L Brands (LB) several times ahead of its 50% dividend cut in late 2018.… Read more

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6 Bizarre Dividend Plays Yielding Up to 16.7%

Almost every corner of the market is overpriced today. That includes dividend stocks, which cost too much and yield too little.

The S&P 500 is at multi-year highs in almost every valuation metric: P/E, P/B, P/S … you name it. And a lot of that froth is coming from traditional income sectors. Yardeni Research’s latest sector study shows that utility stocks, for instance, trade at 18 times estimates, at the very high end of its 10-year range. The sector’s typically high yields, meanwhile, have dried up to a mere 3%.

Hey! Where’d the Dividends Go?

The real estate industry is getting pricey, too, with the iShares U.S.… Read more

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