Sell Now! 20 Dicey Dividends for 2024

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I don’t want to be the messenger of bearish news to kick off the new year. But, as a card-carrying contrarian, I can’t help it either.

We should sell our dicey dividends now. While the market is high.

The best time to buy was October, when vanilla investors were fearful. We discussed “backing up the truck” to buy anything and everything week after week after week.

CNN’s Fear and Greed Index (FGI) had bottomed out at 16 out of 100, an Extreme Fear reading only seen during stock market panics:

1 Rally and 3 Months Ago: Extreme Fear

Meanwhile the bastion of basic financial thinking, MarketWatch.com,… Read more

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I don’t want to be the messenger of bearish news to kick off the new year. But, as a card-carrying contrarian, I can’t help it either.

We should sell our dicey dividends now. While the market is high.

The best time to buy was October, when vanilla investors were fearful. We discussed “backing up the truck” to buy anything and everything week after week after week.

CNN’s Fear and Greed Index (FGI) had bottomed out at 16 out of 100, an Extreme Fear reading only seen during stock market panics:

1 Rally and 3 Months Ago: Extreme Fear

Meanwhile the bastion of basic financial thinking, MarketWatch.com,… Read more

Read More

We’re heading towards the most telegraphed recession of all time. At least in recent memory.

So should we sell everything? Not exactly. Granted, recessions are usually bad for stocks. Vanilla investors who own nothing-but-ETFs are in a tough spot.

But since you’re reading this, I assume:

  1. You pick stocks better than a robotic ETF.
  2. You’re not scared of a stinkin’ recession. You’re here looking for high-yield exceptions to the “sell everything” rule.

I appreciate that about you, my fellow contrarian. If I thought rules applied to me, I would have made it past age 26 in Corporate America! This is why we get along so well.… Read more

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Most vanilla investors like to buy stocks that are well-liked by Wall Street analysts.

This strategy, my contrarian friend, we know is a recipe for disaster.

Why? Well, firms that are already popular with stock jocks have nowhere to go but down. Discarded names, on the other hand, are where the action is because these are the next “analyst upgrade” candidates.

These prices have little downside and lots of upside!

It is difficult to find these out-of-favor plays because most analysts wear rose-colored glasses. They know how their bread gets buttered, and that’s with a bullish outlook.

Which is why a Sell rating is so darned interesting to us.… Read more

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Hands up if you’ve been caught out by a snap dividend cut. Then you know the sickening feeling as investors dump the stock, tanking its price on the way out.

The result? A shriveled income stream and a crushed share price.

It’s a story I fear we’re going to hear a lot in 2023, with rising rates hitting stocks now, and a recession on the horizon. Folks who win will be those who know when to swing into—and out of—strong payers while shunning feeble dividends set to crumble.

To help you protect yourself, I’ve combed the market for dividends that could be on the chopping block.… Read more

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Sell ‘em if you got ‘em.

And c’mon, we all have ‘em.

Let’s think back a few months. Which stocks are we still holding now that we wish we had sold then?

I’m talking about the dividend dogs that, if we’re being honest, are not deserving of long-term positions in our retirement portfolios.

These mutts have had a fun summer—good for them (and us). Now let’s find them a nice home in another portfolio.

Why the deadline? September swoons are common. The Wall Street guys return from their Hampton homes and sell everything that rallied in August.

The summer rally (recently ended?)… Read more

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With the epic “relief rally” finally on fumes, it’s time to consider jettisoning any dividends that (let’s be honest) should have been sold in February. Stock prices are quite disconnected from their underlying fundamentals, and the four firms we’re going to discuss today have particularly poor prospects.

Sure, these yields appear generous. But these days, we can lose this much in a few bad trading sessions.

(Low payout ratios—the percentage of cash flow being paid as dividends—are usually preferable. A negative ratio is not! More on this wreck shortly.)

As you know, I don’t provide personal financial advice. That said, if I owned any of these shares, I’d sell ’em!… Read more

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