3 Secure Funds Yielding 7% That’ll Fund Your Retirement

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The “race to zero” heats up again. You’ve surely heard that Vanguard is now slicing and dicing its already-low fees and commissions. That sounds great, but in reality, the low-fee race is pennywise yet dividend-foolish for us income investors.

To retire on secure, high-yielding long-term investments, we actually prefer to pay a fair management fee. I’ll outline this in a moment via a trio of secure 7% payers. Their generous yields tower above mainstream low-fee options:

More on these three dividend funds in a minute. First, let’s review why we prefer to pay for professional management.

Vanguard kicked off the new trading year by joining the “no-commission” fray that caught the likes of Charles Schwab (SCHW) and E*Trade (ETFC) by surprise in 2019.… Read more

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What’s does 2020 hold for your utility stocks (and closed-end funds)? Will these steady income plays hand us another round of big gains and dividends? Or is there trouble ahead?

These are reasonable questions to ask after these “boring” stocks poured on a huge—and rather “un-utility-like”—26% total return last year:

Utilities or Exploding Small Caps? Tough to Tell.

Let’s dive into three critical factors that will tell the tale for utilities in 2020. And because it’s the season for forecasts, I’ll throw in my verdict on the sector for the coming year, too, and name five utility closed-end funds (CEFs) paying huge dividends of 6.3%… Read more

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I’m about to reveal my very best strategy for pocketing 20%+ upside (and 7%+ dividends) from closed-end funds (CEFs) in the year ahead.

And in the long run, you could be in for truly monstrous gains, like the 94% return, and 8.8% dividend, I locked in using this simple plan just a few days ago.

I’m sharing this powerful tool with you now because this is the perfect time to get into CEFs. Unlike the (bubbly) S&P 500, many of these high-yield funds are cheap now—and spring-loaded for big “snap back” upside in 2020.

In fact, 380 of the roughly 500 CEFs out there—a full 75%—trade below their “true” worth as I write this.… 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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Oil prices have been locked in a tight range for five years—and I know I don’t have to tell you that this has been a disaster for energy investors.

Oil Fails to Launch

With the benchmark Energy Select Sector SPDR (XLE) unable to hold its gains for long (let alone recover to pre-crash levels), even the most conservative energy investor has been clobbered.

Why is this happening?

After all, you’d think a growing global population and emerging-market growth would drive up the price of a limited resource like oil. But the tables have turned. I’ll get into why shortly.

These Dividend Payers Are Better Buys Than Oil

For now, though, I recommend that income-seekers go a different route and pick stocks (and closed-end funds [CEFs]) that benefit from cheaper oil and gas—like utilities.… Read more

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Many retirees like the idea of a “50/50” portfolio that’s half bonds and half stocks. There’s even research that shows withdrawal rates of 3% and 4% may be safer with this mix than they’d be with 100% stocks.

That’s all well and good but doesn’t concern me much. I’m a “No Withdrawal” guy. I spent many late nights in college working up Monte Carlo simulations, where we’d run scenarios 50,000 times to figure out the optimal placement of, say, ambulances in a city to minimize the average response time to an emergency. This type of fancy modeling can work well when you’re able to use the law of large numbers to map the likelihood of every possible situation.… Read more

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Most dividend investors understandably love the idea of an 8% No Withdrawal Portfolio. It’s a simple yet “game changing” idea that you don’t hear much from mainstream pundits and advisors.

Find stocks that pay safe 7%, 8% or more and you can retire comfortably, living off dividend checks while your initial capital stays intact (or even appreciates).

Now this strategy is a bit more complicated than simply finding 8% yields and buying them. Granted the recent stock market pullback has benefited investors like us because we can snag more dividends for our dollar. Yields are higher overall, and that’s a good thing.… Read more

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For those of you shaking your head at your portfolio’s low yield, you can actually 2X or 3X your portfolio’s yield and improve your upside potential to boot using this strategy. And it’s actually simpler than traditional stock picking.

Many income investors have mistakenly parked their capital in “safe” consumer staples like General Mills (GIS), Kimberly-Clark (KMB) and Procter & Gamble (PG) in search of yield and security. Their money was safe, all right: their cash went nowhere – straight sideways – for the last five years!

They’d have been better off “outsourcing” their dividend decisions to the great Mario Gabelli.… Read more

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Forget the 2018 market drop—because it’s handed us a golden opportunity to grab some double-digit “bounce-back” gains in as 2019 rolls out.

I’ll tell you why I’m so excited about the year ahead in a moment. Then I’ll give you eight cheap funds set to arc higher as we move through 2019.

The kicker? Not only are these eight funds poised for big gains in the next 12 months, they throw off incredible dividend yields up to 12.6%, too!

Putting 2018 in Context

First, back to last year’s return, which came in at negative 6.1%, including dividends.

The first bit of good news here is that despite their decline, US stocks still led the rest of the world.… Read more

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Even with the 10-year Treasury “rallying” of late, it still pays just 2.9%. Put a million bucks in T-Bills, and you’re banking $29,000 per year. Barely above poverty levels!

Hence the appeal of closed-end funds (CEFs), which often pay 8% or better. That’s the difference between a paltry minimum-wage income of $29,000 on a million saved or a respectable $80,000 annually.

And if you’re smart about your CEF purchases, you can even buy them at discounts and snare some price upside to boot!

Here’s why: CEFs (unlike their ETF and mutual fund cousins) have fixed pools of shares. Meanwhile their prices trade up and down like stocks – which means these funds can sometimes trade at a discount to the value of their underlying assets!… Read more

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