The Best, And Worst, Ways To Buy Preferred Shares

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As you near (and enter) retirement you probably favor bonds, which provide income with less drama than stocks. However, less drama means less potential upside. With retirees living longer than ever before, it’s important to not go too conservative too early in life. And fortunately today, even 65 or 70 may be too early!

One suggested solution for our long life expectancy “problem” is to stay with stocks longer. But stocks can go down as well as up and a big pullback can inflict permanent damage on a portfolio.

So, we want to capture the dividends that stocks pay and the upside potential that they provide by minimizing our downside risk.… Read more

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It’s a piece of advice so common I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times. Too bad it’s dead wrong.

I’m talking about the so-called “wisdom” that index funds always beat funds with real, live human managers.

Before I get into why it’s wrong—and show you 10 smartly run funds that easily beat their ETF cousins (while dropping an unheard-of 7.5% average dividend into our laps)—let me explain the problem here.

First, I should say that there are cases where index investing makes sense. If you’re 20 years old and you’re putting 10% of your income into a retirement fund, planning to retire when you’re 60 and won’t touch your savings till then, index investing may work for you.…
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Investors looking for income with low risk tend to gravitate heavily toward bonds, but their efforts are often better spent in preferred stocks. These “hybrid” securities commonly pay 5% or 6% but gyrate far less than common stocks – certainly less than most shares that offer a similar amount of yield.

So, what exactly is a preferred stock?

Preferreds are simply another way companies raise capital. However, unlike common stock whose value fluctuates with the success (or lack thereof) of the company, preferred stock trades around a “par value” much like a bond, and they pay fixed dividends – often yielding far more than the common shares.…
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Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have rapidly earned a favored spot among investors thanks to their dirt-cheap diversification. If you want to quickly build a blended portfolio at a low price, it’s hard to do better than ETFs.

Closed-end funds (CEFs), by contrast, are virtually an afterthought, and that’s too bad. Because in many cases – including the three high-yield dynamos I want to show you today – they’re a superior source of quality and raw total-return performance.

What is a closed-end fund exactly? Funnily, it sounds almost like an ETF – it’s a big, pooled investment in numerous securities (stocks, bonds, preferred shares or other assets) that trades on an exchange.…
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