10 ETF Dividends in Serious Danger

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10 ETF Dividends in Serious Danger

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) can be an easy “one-click way” to diversify your dividends. Instead of grinding on the viability of any single payout stream, why not build a basket of them?

But be careful – some pooled payouts are all bad and don’t even keep up with the broader market. In a minute, we’ll review ten dividend dogs masquerading around under the perceived “diversification safety” that ETFs provide.

Make no mistake, there’s a recent rush to ETFs. The 2016 U.S. Exchange Traded Funds Study by Greenwich Associates shows that institutional investors, including pension funds, are increasingly pouring their money into ETFs, from 18.9% of all ETF assets in 2015 to 21.2% last year. And they’re being driven by a number of factors, such as decreasing risk and adding diversity to their portfolios. …
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This 6.8% Payout Is “Hedged” Against a Market Crash

In my last article, I showed you funds that pay 6.4%+ yields and give you “crash insurance” in case of a market meltdown. The great thing about these funds is that they also offer tremendous upside in steady or up markets.

If that sounds like the best of both worlds, it’s because it is.

Instead of just buying the S&P 500 in an index fund, for example, you can choose the Nuveen S&P 500 Dynamic Overwrite Total Return Fund (SPXX). It tracks the index, provides extra downside protection and pays out a much higher dividend than index funds, too.

This isn’t the only fund that does this trick. There are dozens more.

In fact, if you’re nervous about the market and want as much safety as you can get while still staying invested, there’s one fund that’s an even better choice than SPXX: …
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My Top Buy for a 6.6% Yield and “Crash Insurance”

The past year has been good for the S&P 500: it’s up about 15.7%, including dividends.

So if you’re simply tracking the index through an exchange traded fund, congrats. That’s a decent gain.

But I’ve got one simple trick—and a far superior fund buy—that can help you do even better … and grab a big chunk of your gain in cash, too.

That trick? Covered calls.

Covered what?

Covered calls are a strategy in which investors buy stocks and sell call options against those stocks.

Think of call options as a kind of insurance; investors buy them if they are short the market and want to protect themselves from blowing up in case the market rallies. If you sell those options to investors, you’re essentially becoming an insurer, giving these gamblers the protection they crave to cover their risky bets. …
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