Dividend yields are so low today that dividend growth is actually becoming cool. Income investors are combing over “Dividend Aristocrats”–stocks that have raised their payouts for 25 straight years–in desperation to find any meaningful yield.

Problem is, these stocks are so popular and richly valued that they don’t pay much today. Nor will they yield much more tomorrow, even with yearly raises. Our princely picks pay less than 2% today, which is going to net you less than $20,000 on a million bucks.

Dividend Aristocrat Yields Head Towards Zero

The Dividend Aristocrats are the well-worn, oft-recommended dividend growers of the S&P 500. All 57 Aristocrats have improved the amount of their total annual payouts every year for at least 25 years (and in many cases, they have done it for much longer.)

Yes, reliably increasing income matters. After all, the dividend-growth strategy in my Hidden Yields product is roughly doubling our money every four years with a 17%+ yearly return since inception.

But the Aristocrats are starting with too much of a handicap. As you can see above, the ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF’s (NOBL) yield is better than the market, but still below 2%.

The actual average among all 57 components isn’t much better, at 2.4%. In fact, only 13 components yield more than 3%. And just two—AT&T (T) and AbbVie (ABBV)—yield more than 5%.

That’d be OK if we were sacrificing high nominal yields for great price performance, but we’re not. In fact, NOBL has actually underperformed the S&P 500 since 2013 inception.

My take? Cherry pick ‘em. A few Aristocrats are truly royalty among the entire world of publicly traded stocks. Others actually have promising growth prospects that you wouldn’t expect from supposedly stodgy dividend plays.

Let’s look at a six-pack of the best and worst Dividend Aristocrats together.

McCormick & Co. (MKC) 
Dividend Yield: 1.4%

Let’s start with McCormick & Co. (MKC), a frequent cupboarder in American kitchens. Whether it’s the namesake spices, Old Bay seasoning, Stubb’s barbecue sauce, Zatarain’s rice mixes, French’s mustard or Frank’s Red Hot, our food has often been flavored up by its products.

In fact, you probably enjoy McCormick more often than you realize, given that it also provides spices and condiments to restaurants. Overseas, too, as its international reach spans roughly 150 countries and territories.

All this makes McCormick & Co. a recession-resistant play hiding in your pantry corner. When times are tight, folks eat out less and prepare more food at home.

Check out our last mega-recession as an example. While the S&P 500 was trashed during the bear market of 2007-09, MKC managed to tread the boiling water for most of the downturn:

Bam! 

Its dividend, which has improved for 33 consecutive years, has grown by a nice 43% since the start of 2015. But it yields less than a 10-year T-note today, which is not good enough for us income seekers.

Franklin Resources (BEN)
Dividend Yield: 3.8%

Franklin Resources (BEN), the name behind the Franklin Templeton investment firm, has expanded its payout for 37 years. Recently shares have jumped 73% since the start of 2015 plus the firm dished a generous $3-per-share special dividend at the start of 2018 as a way of giving back after the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That translated into an additional 9 percentage points of yield for the year!

However, Franklin’s yield has recently rocketed higher for the wrong reasons. Its business is in the tank, and the dividend looks increasingly dicey as a result.

In June, I highlighted BEN as one of several “zombie dividends” to sell. The company has been suffering from dwindling assets under management for years, and it was way behind the curve with ETFs, finally launching its first suite of passive products in 2017. Since we called out this loser, it quickly dropped 20%:

The Wrong Way to Increase Yield

Walmart (WMT)
Dividend Yield: 2.8%

Walmart (WMT) is one of the few retailers that can compete with (and potentially topple) Amazon.com. Sales through Walmart’s website and mobile app are booming. Its e-commerce revenue is growing at a brisk 43% clip year-over-year.

In my college days at Cornell we operations research and industrial engineers (ORIE) actually studied Walmart’s supply chain. It was one of the finest examples of ORIE applied to market domination. “Wally World” is one of the few retailers positioned to compete with Jeff Bezos and Amazon on same-day delivery, thanks to its logistics expertise and deep bench of brick and mortar locations. Really the firm is one partnership with Uber away from getting you anything you want within the hour.

WMT also serves as a poster boy for the inarguable link between dividend growth and share-price returns.

Walmart (WMT) Always Snaps Back

Clorox (CLX)
Dividend Yield: 2.8%

Clorox (CLX) is a consumer staple that needs no introduction. But to get an idea of just how wide its reach is, understand that Clorox is far more than just Clorox. It’s also Pine-Sol, Brita water filters, Fresh Step cat litters, Glad trash bags, Liquid Plumr, Burt’s Bees lip balms and even Hidden Valley ranch sauces.

These are durable brands that have no-brainer recession appeal. But the company is taking a decided step back.

Earlier this month, Clorox presided over a dour analyst meeting in which it cut its full-year guidance from $6.50-$6.30 per share to $6.25-$6.05 per share. That led to several price-target downgrades, including by JPMorgan’s Andrea Teixeira (Underweight rating), who trimmed her outlook from $143 per share to $137. What’s particularly concerning is she sees additional downside earnings risk.

There’s little criticizing CLX’s dividend growth. Payouts have been on the rise for 42 consecutive years, and have improved 43% since the start of 2015.

But the sub-3% yield is nothing to fawn over, especially given Clorox’s growth issues. It’s also curiously priced at 23 times profits.

Clorox’s (CLX) Merely Market-Matching Performance Could Slow Even More

Dover (DOV)
Dividend Yield: 1.9%

Near the end of 2018, I told Market Wrap host Moe Ansari that the key to finding potential doublers is to home in on boring stocks.

And Dover (DOV) is a publicly traded bottle of ZzzQuil.

Dover is a diversified industrial that makes everything from product-tracing technologies to bench tools to chemical dispensing systems and even commercial refrigeration units. That kind of revenue diversification always keeps Dover in the game, and more importantly, it has helped finance one of the longest-standing payout increases among the Aristocrats.

Indeed, I mentioned Dover in July 2018. Since then, it has announced two more annual dividend increases to extend its streak to 64 years. It has also quadrupled the broader market with 43% in total returns.

The Saucy Side of Fluids and Food Equipment

Dover is a little pricey at the moment, but it should keep slowly churning out growth of about 3% annually over the next few years. The bottom line is what’s more encouraging–analysts are looking for a 17% bump this year and a still-respectable 8% improvement on top of that in 2020.

3M (MMM)
Dividend Yield: 3.5%

“Broken.”

That’s the word JPMorgan analyst Stephen Tusa used to describe 3M’s (MMM) business model in an early August note.

“There is something that goes beyond the impact of cyclical volume pressure here. (A) structural issue, that there is generally a higher cost to serve than many appreciate, now seems clear.”

It’s yet another sign of just how much has turned for what once was one of the most consistent blue chips on Wall Street. It’s currently mired in its sharpest decline in decades, a 35% drop since early 2018.

The industrial conglomerate that’s responsible for Post-it Notes, Scotch Brite  and Nexcare bandages has delivered a few dismal reports in that time. That includes a ghastly earnings miss in April that saw it also cut its full-year forecast, announcement of the layoffs of 2,000 workers, and informed investors it was undergoing some restructuring and other measures to try to cut costs and boost cash flow.

It’s also been bitten by the litigation bug. 3M could face as much as $6 billion in legal liabilities connected to accusations that the company’s chemicals have shown up in groundwater across the country.

3M is one of the longest-tenured Dividend Aristocrats at 61 consecutive years and counting. But even that seems like less of a guarantee than it used to. While the payout is well-covered at less than 70% of profits, Tusa warned that “Another leg down in fundamentals would mean they are on watch for a cut, after 37 straight years of increase.”

Will things degenerate that much? It’s difficult to say. But 3M appears set up to endure more pain before it establishes an enduring recovery.

Better Than Aristocrats: “2008-Proof” Income Plays With 7.5% Yields and Fast 10%+ Upside

It’s remarkable to think that even the most reputable blue chips sporting decades of dividend growth can be so suspect.

But that’s how I can help you separate yourself from “first-level” investors. While they lean on lazy recommendations based on past performance and reputations, I invest using methodical, forward-looking analysis, and sniff out the dangers in supposedly no-brainer plays.

And I want to start by showing you how to get real income. We’re talking safe, sustainable payouts of 3 to 4 times what most Dividend Aristocrats deliver.

This is no time to gamble in a desperate stretch for yield. We’re in the back half of a bull market that’s extra-long in the tooth, and numerous global risks are converging on this fragile market.

Big yields mean nothing if you’re not protecting your hard-earned nest egg, too.

And that’s precisely the inspiration behind my 5-stock “2008-proof” portfolio, which I’m going to GIVE you today.

These 5 income wonders deliver two things most “blue-chip pretenders” don’t:

1. Rock-solid (and growing) 7.5% average cash dividends (more than my portfolio’s average).
2. A share price that doesn’t crumble beneath your feet while you’re collecting these massive payouts. In fact, you can bank on 7% to 15% yearly price upside from these five “steady Eddie” picks.

With the Dow regularly lurching a stomach-churning 1,000 points (or more) in a single day during pullbacks, I’m sure a safe—and growing—7.5% every single year would have a lot of appeal.

And remember, 7.5% is just the average! One of these titans pays a ROCK-SOLID 8.5%.

Think about that for a second: You can buy this incredible stock right this second, and every single year from now on, nearly 9% of your original buy boomerangs straight back to you in CASH.

If that’s not the very definition of safety, I don’t know what is.

These five stout stocks have sailed through meltdown after meltdown with their share prices intact, doling out huge cash dividends the entire time. Owners of these amazing “2008-proof” plays might have wondered what all the fuss was about!

These five “2008-proof” wonders give you the best of both worlds: a 7.5% CASH dividend that jumps year in and year out, with your feet firmly planted on a share price that holds steady in a market inferno and floats higher when stocks go Zen.

Editor's Note: The stock market is way up – and that’s terrible news for us dividend investors. Yields haven’t been this low in decades! But there are still plenty of great opportunities to secure meaningful income if you know where to look. Brett Owens' latest report reveals how you can easily (and safely) rake in 8%+ dividends and never worry about drawing down your capital again. Click here for full details!

Source: Contrarian Outlook

Let’s brush aside some financial noise today, as I’d like to show you the best retirement investment you can make.

I’m talking about secure dividends that’ll grow every year, fund your regular expenses today, plus grow your capital so you don’t have to ever worry about running out of money.

You won’t have to worry about what the Fed says, either, because this worry-free strategy is ahead of Jay Powell and his crew. In fact, this “1-click” indicator not only tells you what to buy, but it nails the “when” better than any armchair (or professional) Fed watcher.

We’re going to use real estate investment trusts (REITs) as our vehicles of choice.

Why REITs? For starters, they’re pullback-proof. For most of the late 2018 downturn, REITs actually rose. And even when they did get caught in the downdraft, they only fell half as much as the rest of the market:

REITs Show Their “Pullback-Proof” Chops

What’s more, by simply watching REITs, you can tell where the Fed will go next. Consider last January: as the Fed chief stubbornly stuck to his rate-hike plans throughout the month, investors in REITs—which are an ideal play on falling rates, as we’ll dive into in a moment—saw right through him.

They piled in!

Before poor Powell could find his way to a microphone to swear off his rate hikes, savvy REIT buyers had pounded these trusts a lot higher than the market—even though REITs were starting from a higher base, thanks to their resilience in the pullback:

REITs Call Powell’s Bluff

Fast-forward to today and we’ve got ideal conditions for REIT investing. First off, interest rates are low, and traders betting through the futures market expect them to go lower:

Source: CME Group

Second, the yield on the 10-year Treasury has collapsed, sitting at 1.75% after hitting highs above 3.2% late last year.

And some Wall Street vets, like Bob Michele, CIO and head of global fixed income at JPMorgan Asset Management, say they see the yield on the 10-year going to zero. Others see negative interest rates as a real possibility here in the US.

I think you’ll agree that REITs’ big dividends (roughly double, on average, what your typical S&P 500 stock pays) will be irresistible to a lot of investors if the other option is to pay the bank to hold onto their money!

You can set yourself up for bigger gains—and greater safety—if you look for REITs whose dividends are not only growing but accelerating. That’s because an accelerating dividend acts like a magnet on a company’s share price—pulling its payout higher with every single increase.

You can see this pattern in stock after stock—and not just REITs. Check out how shares of Coca-Cola (KO) rolled higher with each payout hike:

Coke’s “Dividend Magnet” in Action

It’s uncanny! And it shows that you just can’t keep a good dividend-payer down.

But we’re not going to buy shares of Coke today, because, as you can see above, its dividend growth is slowing. To lock in our upside (and hedge our downside), we need stocks whose payouts are, as I mentioned earlier, delivering bigger and bigger hikes every year.

When you buy “dividend accelerators,” gains can come fast—I’m talking 32% in just 10 months fast!

How “Dividend Magnets” Propelled Us to a Quick 32% Gain

To see this dead-simple dividend-growth strategy in action, look at American Tower (AMT), a REIT I recommended in my Hidden Yields advisory in November 2018.

The REIT is a lynchpin of the world’s data networks, with 150,000+ cellphone towers scattered around the planet.

AMT is one of four major cell-tower REITs—the others being SBA Communications (SBAC), Crown Castle International (CCI) and Uniti Group (UNIT).

The REIT yields 1.6% today. But that low current yield masks the fact that management hikes the payout every quarter, and by no small amount: the dividend has soared 338% since American Tower declared its first payout in March 2012.

But a funny thing happened: after tracking the dividend closely, AMT’s share price fell off the pace. And when that gap got particularly wide late last year, we pounced:

AMT’s Dividend Magnet (Temporarily) Loses Its Grip …

The result? In the following 10 months, we bagged three dividend hikes (a nearly 10% raise in all) and 32% in total returns as AMT’s price raced to catch up to its dividend! That’s nearly three times the S&P 500’s 11.7% gain in that time.

… Then Yanks Us to Big Gains (and Dividends!)

69% Gains, 5 Payout Hikes and 107% Dividend Growth—in 3 Years!

If you’re still not sold on the power of a surging payout, let me show you what happened to another data-center REIT: CoreSite Realty (COR). Before I recommended CoreSite in March 2016, it was showing the very same dividends-up, share-price-up pattern:

CoreSite Auditions for Our Hidden Yields Portfolio

It is true that, unlike with AMT, CoreSite’s dividend hadn’t fallen behind its payout. But that didn’t matter because management was flush with cash!

Driven by top-quality tenants like Microsoft (MSFT) and Verizon (VZ), CoreSite had seen its revenue grow 17% annually and funds from operations (FFO, the REIT equivalent of earnings per share) surge 24% over the preceding three years, so management had plenty of runway to grow the dividend.

I’d seen enough—I issued a buy call on the stock in Hidden Yields on March 18, 2016.

What happened? By February 2019, when we closed our position, management had hiked the payout five times—more than doubling it in size—and driving us to a 69% total return in just under three years!

CoreSite Rolls to a Fast Dividend Double

That’s the punch a soaring dividend packs. When you combine it with plunging (and possibly even negative) interest rates, you get a setup for even bigger upside.

This is the perfect time to mention my 7 top dividend-growth picks now. They’re set to hand out for life-changing gains and surging yields, thanks to their powerful “dividend magnets.”

In fact, I fully expect these 7 dividend stars to …

DOUBLE Your Money Every 5 Years (or less!)

I can’t wait to tell you about these 7 off-the-radar buys, whose payouts are growing so fast that I fully expect them double an investment made today by 2024—and likely a lot sooner. 

And because these gains will be driven by these 7 stocks’ surging payouts, you can expect a huge slice of that win to come your way in cash!

Imagine turning a retirement “pot” of $250,000 into $500,000, or $500,000 into $1 million. That’s the kind of upside I’m talking about here.

These 7 dividend wonders are ridiculously cheap NOW—and they’re growing payouts at an accelerating pace.

Even if the market does take a tumble, these stocks’ soaring dividends give you protection as more yield-seekers spot their surging income streams and buy in, eager to hedge their downside with a reliable wave of dividend cash.

Editor's Note: The stock market is way up – and that’s terrible news for us dividend investors. Yields haven’t been this low in decades! But there are still plenty of great opportunities to secure meaningful income if you know where to look. Brett Owens' latest report reveals how you can easily (and safely) rake in 8%+ dividends and never worry about drawing down your capital again. Click here for full details!

Source: Contrarian Outlook

Today I’m going to show you the one market indicator you can use to grab gains as high as 70% in nine months (or less!), plus dividends growing double-digits, too.

It’s a measure of market panic you’ve probably heard about, but here’s the funny thing: everyone is looking at this indicator backwards.

Let me explain.

First, I’m talking about the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index, or VIX for short. You’ve probably heard of the VIX: dubbed the market’s “fear gauge,” it’s a measure of how volatile traders see stocks in the next 30 days.

In other words, when investors are twitchy, the VIX rises—and when they’re confident, it trends down. But to reallyprofit off this measure of terror, you have to be a gutsy contrarian and buy when fear shoots up.

It’s one of the most reliable buy indicators there is! Take a look:

VIX Up, Stocks Up

As you can see, every time the VIX spikes, the market takes off soon after. Take a look at the end of that chart: you can see that the VIX is a bit higher than it’s been for most of 2019.

That means our buy window is easing open once again.

And if history is any guide, our opportunity will soon get better. That’s because September is one of the more volatile months, according to Yardeni Research, and typically turns in the worst performance.

And with profits and sales still strong, unemployment low and wages rising, any pullback (and spike in the VIX) this month would be a great buying opportunity.

But we’re not going to settle for ho-hum dividends from darlings like McDonald’s (MCD) or Coca-Cola (KO). To ride our “fear gauge” to market-beating gains, we need stocks whose dividends are not only growing but accelerating.

Last week, in “3 Dividend Stocks That Are Near-Perfect for High Volatility,” I showed you how a rising dividend is a magnet, pulling a company’s share price higher as the payout grows. And the lure of a rising dividend is very strong now, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note plunging below the yield on the typical S&P 500 stock.

To show you how potent buying a rising dividend against a spiking VIX can be, let me take you back to December 21, 2018, when the “fear gauge” hit 30—the highest level in nearly five years.

That prompted me to do something unusual in my Hidden Yields advisory.

You see, Hidden Yields comes out monthly, and every issue brings you one new dividend-growth pick. But in December, with my favorite contrarian indicator going wild, I decided the time was right to pound the table on not one but two dividend-growth picks.

How Fear Drove a 70% Gain

The first was NRC Health (NRC), a low-key maker of “back-end” systems for the healthcare industry, specifically surveys that solicit patient feedback on doctors, nurses and staff.

It’s a low-key firm with a smart business model: it’s free for patients to use but charges thousands of dollars a year to cash-rich healthcare providers! That gave it:

• Recurring annual payments from customers with
• Recession-proof businesses.

I also liked the fact that NRC had plenty of room to grow by building customized systems for clients and cross-selling its other products. It nearly tripled its “regular” dividend since 2014 and was kicking out regular special dividends, too:

NRC’s Dividend Grows 2 Ways

How did that buy turn out? Fast-forward nine months, and NRC had soared 70%!

NRC Triples the Market’s Gain

We weren’t done.

Because with my “fear gauge” still redlining back in December, I added a second dividend grower I’d been watching to our Hidden Yields stable.

That would be NexStar (NXST), a midcap stock that had been dragged down by a misunderstanding of its business: NexStar is one of the biggest local-TV operators in the country, reaching an impressive 38% of US households.

This was a classic “disrespected dividend,” trading at 6.5-times earnings when I recommended it. But here’s what most folks missed:

• NexStar’s retransmission revenue—the money it collects from broadcasters for the local content it provides—was growing quickly. Plus,
• Its digital-media revenue (from its 114 local websites, 202 local mobile apps and online videos) was growing even faster.

Add these channels together and you had a company growing profits, sales and dividends at an amazing clip:

We Bought This for Just 6.5X Earnings

Over the following nine months, NXST handed us a fast 31% return, easily eclipsing the market!

“Fear Gauge” Ignites Another Market-Beating Return

Now let’s turn our attention to 7 of my very best dividend-growth picks. They’re perfect for the markets we’re in right now.

7 Buys to DOUBLE Your Money Every 5 Years (High VIX or Low)

I can’t wait to tell you about these off-the-radar buys, which are poised to throw off strong double-digit gains—year in and year out—with much of that return coming your way in cash dividends! 

So what kind of upside am I talking about?

Enough to DOUBLE your money every 5 years—and likely less time than that!

Imagine turning a retirement “pot” of $250,000 into $500,000, or $500,000 into $1 million. That’s the kind of upside I’m talking about here.

And you don’t have to wait for the VIX to spike to buy them. These 7 dividend wonders are cheap NOW—and like NexStar and NRC, they’re growing payouts at an accelerating pace.

Editor's Note: The stock market is way up – and that’s terrible news for us dividend investors. Yields haven’t been this low in decades! But there are still plenty of great opportunities to secure meaningful income if you know where to look. Brett Owens' latest report reveals how you can easily (and safely) rake in 8%+ dividends and never worry about drawing down your capital again. Click here for full details!

Source: Contrarian Outlook

If this were any “normal” time, we’d be able to buy safe bonds and collect enough income on our nest egg to fund our retirements. Unfortunately, this is the “new normal” where the Fed is not the friend of us current and hopeful retirees!

Jay Powell is afraid for his job, which means he’s going to cut rates and keep them low for a long time. This means we must look beyond traditional bonds for meaningful income.

What about blue chip dividend-paying stocks? Well, an 11-year stock market rally has ruined that idea. Anyone putting new money in a pricey dividend aristocrat is “buying and hoping” that the stock continues to levitate while the firm dishes its dividend.

And about that dividend. Blue chips don’t pay more than 2% or, at most, 3% today. On a $1 million portfolio that’s less than $30,000 in annual income. Not enough to retire on!

Fortunately, there’s a better way. I’ve developed the Perfect Income Portfolio to safely double, triple, and even quadruple the payouts on your 2% payers. You can turn these misers into 6%, 7% and even 8% yields (for $80,000 on that million bucks) without doing anything risky.

And oh by the way, you can grow your capital base, too! Whether it’s $250,000, a million or $2.5 million (or anywhere lower, higher or in between) you can bank these big yields and enjoy price appreciation to boot.

How do I know? Because we’ve done it. In the four years I’ve been managing our Perfect Income Portfolio, our investors have enjoyed 11.4% returns per year since inception. This means they’ve collected their 6%, 7% and 8%+ cash yields while enjoying additional price appreciation on their investments.

Our “secret” has been three safe yet lesser-known income vehicles. Their obscurity creates opportunity for us contrarian income seekers. I’ll explain by showing you how we buy bonds for less than their face value.

Perfect Income Vehicle #1: Buy $1 in Bonds for Less

Many investors believe bond ETFs are a convenient way to add a basket of bonds to their portfolio. Problem is, they’re not getting any deals buying them.

ETFs never trade at discounts. Their sponsors simply issue more shares to capitalize on any increased demand, which means anyone who buys one of these popular vehicles always pays list price.

But we don’t have to pay full price for a bond. Ever. Which is why we should look past ETFs and consider underappreciated closed-end funds (CEFs) instead.

The “closed” in CEF means that the fund’s pool of shares is fixed. Which is why these vehicles can have wild price swings above and below the values of their actual assets. (Good for us contrarian income seekers – we can buy below fair value to maximize our yields and upside.)

They are also “closed” in their actual communications with the financial world. Fund information is often limited (sometimes to one-page fact sheets) and it’s difficult to get management to talk to you.

(Also good for us, because it makes bargains more prevalent in this “mysterious” corner of the income world. Especially for us persistent types).

Plus, we can hire the best bond managers on the planet to handpick our bond buys for free!

Take the DoubleLine Income Solutions Fund (DSL), the vehicle run by the “bond god” Jeffrey Gundlach himself. Its holdings pay plenty, boasting coupons of 7%, 8% and even 9% and higher!

Granted, DSL’s bond holdings are a bit obscure (63% foreign corporate bonds, for example). But there are deals to be had and that’s exactly why we hired Gundlach to search the globe for us for big fixed income payments. He’s the man in Bondland and often gets the first phone call on new juicy deals. You and I can’t buy these bonds as individual investors, but the bond god can buy them for us.

My income subscribers have indeed enjoyed 61% total returns (including dividends) courtesy of Gundlach’s DSL.

When We Were Bond Gods

And they make CEFs in more traditional bond flavors, too. Some provide you with ways to trade in your mere “common” shares for preferred stock that pays more.

Perfect Income Vehicle #2: One-Click to Double Your Yields

Not familiar with preferred shares? You’re not alone—most investors only consider common shares of stock when they look for income. But you can double your yields or better and actually reduce your risk by trading in your common shares for preferreds.

A company will issue preferred shares to raise capital, just as it offers bonds. In return it will pay regular dividends on these shares and, as the name suggests, preferred shareholders receive their payouts before common shares.

They typically get paid more and even have a priority claim over common stock on the company’s earnings and assets in case something bad happens, like bankruptcy. They are “preferred” over common stock and come after secured debt in the bankruptcy pecking order.

So far, so good. The tradeoff? Less upside. But in today’s expensive stock market that may not be a bad substitution to make. Let’s walk through a sample common-for-preferred exchange that would nearly double your current dividends with a simple trade-in.

As I write, the common shares from JPMorgan (JPM) pay 2.8%. But the firm recently issued Series DD preferreds paying 5.75%. JPMorgan shareholders looking for more income may be happy to make this tradeoff.

Meanwhile, Bank of America (BAC) common pays 2% today. But B of A just issued some preferreds that pay a fat 5.88%. That’s a 194% potential income raise for shareholders who want to trade in their garden-variety shares. But how exactly do we buy these as individual investors? Which series are we looking for again?

A big problem with preferred shares is that they are complicated to purchase without the help of a human broker. So, many investors attempt to streamline their online buys and simply purchase ETFs (exchange-traded funds) that specialize in preferreds, such as the PowerShares Preferred Portfolio (PGX) and the iShares S&P Preferred Stock Index Fund (PFF).

After all, these funds pay up to 5.9% and, in theory, they diversify your credit risk. Unfortunately, many ETF buyers have little understanding of preferred shares, let alone how a particular fund invests in them. Should we entrust the selection of preferred shares to a mere formula baked into an ETF?

Again, no! Another problem with the ETF model is that it doesn’t account for credit risk as accurately as an expert human can. Which means a better idea is — you guessed it! — to find an active manager to handpick your preferred portfolio. Buying a discounted closed-end fund (CEF) is the best way to do this.

Here’s a Perfect Income Portfolio favorite outperforming its more popular ETF cousins since we bought the CEF in late 2015:

Why We Prefer CEFs

When we’re shopping in the preferred aisle, it’s a “no brainer” to go with the CEF concierge service. They yield more, they appreciate in price more, and again, the money manager is free when we buy at a discount.

Perfect Income Vehicle #3: Doubling Your Money with Dividends

We’re going to switch gears and jump into stocks. But don’t worry, these aren’t overpriced, underpaying blue chips that the Wall Street fanboys push. No, these are hidden gems that get no coverage from the (lame) mainstream financial media.

We can thank the giant firms that manage most of the investment money in the US for these bargains being available. Think Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, your neighborhood Edward Jones, and even Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard.

These firms serve hundreds of thousands of clients, with millions and millions of dollars, around the country and the world. They offer the same approaches for people of similar situations, which means they can only buy stocks which there are “enough of” (have enough liquidity) for everyone.

That means one simple thing. The familiar names can’t recommend our high-income producers to you. Instead, they stick you in pretty much what everyone has.

Apple has a market value of more than $900 billion. And shares yield just 1.5%. Convenience, familiarity, and liquidity come at the expense of the stock’s current payout.

Let’s contrast Apple with hospital landlord Medical Properties Trust (MPW). The firm pays a generous 5.4% on the capital you invest today, 3.5X as much as Apple! And its focus, the hospital, is arguably even more indispensable than the iPhone (which does have competition from Samsung and others).

But MPW the stock isn’t large enough for the big pension funds to buy or for the brand-name money managers to pile into. With a modest market cap of $7 billion, MPW is plenty liquid for you and me—and exclusive enough to provide us with this generous yield premium!

Plus, just like Apple, it raises its dividend every year. And dividend growth is, over the long haul, the main driver of higher stock prices. We added MPW to our Perfect Income Portfolio stock in November 2015 and received three dividend raises over the ensuing three-and-a-half years. The result? We enjoyed 105% total returns and really crushed the broader S&P 500:

Perfect Income Vehicle #3: Dividends with 100%+ Upside

The Perfect Income Portfolio also adds years to our lives. We don’t need stock prices to stay high to retire! Most investors who sell shares for income spend their days staring at every tick of the markets.

You can live better than this, generate more income and even enjoy more upside by employing our contrarian approach to the yield markets. We live off dividends alone. And we buy issues when they are out-of-favor (like right now) so that our payouts and upside are both maximized.

Plus 8% Dividends, Paid Monthly, Make Retirement Even Easier

And by the way, you can even use my “no withdrawal” strategy to make sure you’re:

1. Banking 8% annual dividends,
2. Enjoying additional price upside, and
3. Getting paid monthly to boot!

If this interests you, I’d recommend starting with my all-star retirement portfolio. It contains 8 of the absolute best-preferred stocks, REITs and CEFs out there.

If you’re scratching your head at these terms, you’re not alone. These are investments that you won’t hear about on CNBC or read about in the Wall Street Journal. Which is why we have these fantastic opportunities available in this “no yield” world.

I’ll explain more about them in a minute. I’ll also show you why my 8% eight-pack is well diversified across all types of investments and sectors, and the cash flows funding these dividends will do well no matter what happens in the broader economy or stock market.

Editor's Note: The stock market is way up – and that’s terrible news for us dividend investors. Yields haven’t been this low in decades! But there are still plenty of great opportunities to secure meaningful income if you know where to look. Brett Owens' latest report reveals how you can easily (and safely) rake in 8%+ dividends and never worry about drawing down your capital again. Click here for full details!

Source: Contrarian Outlook

Successful dividend investing is simple, though not necessarily easy. There are nuances which trip up many investors (including most professionals!) These twists and turns create “yield alpha” opportunities for contrarian-minded income investors like us.

If everyone else in the market were perfectly grounded and calculated, there would be no chance for us to make above-average returns. After all, the 11.3% and 17.5% annualized returns that my Contrarian Income Report and Hidden Yields readers are earning would be snapped up in a perfectly efficient market.

Thanks to these inefficiencies, we are able to bank big yields and price returns in Dividend Land. Ready to retire on dividends? Follow these seven steps and we’ll do it together. Let’s start with an obvious yet underappreciated rule for income investors.

Step 1: Count Your Dividends

Since we focus on high yield, most of our returns come from the “yield” component of stocks. So let’s not forget about them when figuring out our returns!

For example, we added this preferred stock fund to our portfolio in October 2015 and its price-only returns look quite pedestrian:

Don’t Fixate on Price Alone…

We’ve gained 51%, while the price is up only 13%. The majority of our fat 51% gains have been delivered via cash dividends. So let’s make sure we add in the orange (top) line below to reflect the big driver of our profits!

… Remember to Add Those Dividends!

Step 2: Find Price Upside, Too

While we could build a portfolio that’s 100% invested in these types of safe bonds and do just fine, we’re better off putting 50% or so of our cash in stocks. The upside is too good to ignore.

Dividend growth is, over the long haul, the main driver of higher stock prices. We added this stock in November 2015 and received three dividend raises over the ensuing three-and-a-half years. The result? We enjoyed 105% total returns and really crushed the broader S&P 500:

Why We Buy Dividend Stocks, Too

Step 3: Monitor Dividend Coverage

A dividend hike is the ultimate sign of dividend safety, so I prefer stocks that consistently raise their payouts. The likelihood that a company is going to raise its dividend (or cut it) is directly related to its payout ratio or the percentage of its profits (or cash flows) that it is dishing out to shareholders as dividends.

As a rule of thumb, a payout ratio below 50% is a sign of dividend safety. Some capital efficient firms can pay more and real estate investment trusts (REITs) can pay up to 90% of their cash flows as dividends.

It depends on the company (and if you don’t feel like following the payouts and cash flows of 20 stocks and funds yourself, I’ll gladly do it for you as part of your subscription!)

Dividend cuts are no fun. Not only are they a monthly pay cut for us, but (worse) they destroy capital. Take the case of CenturyLink (CTL), which has been writing its investors dividend checks that it couldn’t cash since I called out this “paper telecom tiger” in May 2016 (and many times since!)

At the time, CTL was paying out 135% of its earnings as dividends. The company wasn’t growing profits, either, so the payout eventually had to go. Mr. Market eventually sniffed this out and CTL’s management team finally made the inevitable cut earlier this year:

Stocks Rise and Fall with Their Dividends

Remember the rising dividend that drove our gains in step two? The opposite happened to unfortunate CTL investors here, as their stock’s price dropped 59% while they received a 54% pay cut!

Step 4: Don’t Fight the Fed

“Don’t Fight the Fed” was chapter four in investing wizard Martin Zweig’s legendary book Winning on Wall Street. Here’s why we’ll make it step four here.

Zweig devoted 40 thoughtful pages to teach readers why they should “go with the flow” with respect to the Fed’s trend at any given moment.

Is the Fed raising rates? Then we should favor floating-rate bonds because their coupons (and values) tend to tick higher as rates climb.

Has the cycle topped? When the Fed is prioritizing “easy money,” we should trade in our floaters for fixed-rate bonds, which gain in value as rates fall.

Step 5: Favor Out-of-Favor

What did our winners in step one and two have in common? Two things:

1. They were well run, and (most importantly)
2. We bought them when each was out-of-favor.

Contrarian investing should be uncomfortable. We want to buy stocks when their yields are high with respect to their norms. To put it plainly, we want to buy this stock when our “dividend per dollar” (as reflected by the orange line) is high. It means the price is low!

High Historical Yield Meant Low Price

And likewise, we want to purchase closed-end funds (CEFs) when they are trading at discounts to the value of the assets on their books. This is a unique feature of CEFs because they trade like stocks, with fixed pools of shares. They can and will trade at premiums and discounts to their portfolios, which means we can sit back and wait for bargains.

Step 6: Get (and Stay) Fully Invested

The stock market goes up about two-thirds of the time. Permabears miss out on compounding and it’s not as easy to be a part-time bear as it sounds.

To illustrate this let’s consider a study by Hulbert Financial. The firm looked at the best “peak market timers”–the gurus who correctly forecasted the bursting of the Internet bubble in March 2000 and the Great Recession in October 2007.

These were the clairvoyant advisors who had their clients out of stocks and mostly in cash when the S&P 500 was about to be chopped in half. Surely their clients did great over the long haul, given their capital was largely intact at the market bottoms, right?

Wrong. None of these advisors turned in top performances. The reason? While they were good at timing tops, they were terrible at timing bottoms! The bearish advisors didn’t get their clients back into stocks anywhere near the bottom. They had their capital intact, but they didn’t deploy it–and they largely missed out on the epic bull markets that followed these crashes.

Think about the advisors and investors who sold in late December when the “bear market” became official. They moved to cash at the worst possible moment and have been on the sidelines waiting for a low risk “retest” of the lows. Mr. Market loves to confuse the most amount of people, and he really outdid himself this time!

Barely a Bear Market…

… And Right Back to a Bull!

We can be smart about staying in the market by focusing on “pullback-proof” names.

Step 7: Prepare for Pullbacks

Where’s the market going from here? Well, if you own pullback-proof dividend payers, you probably don’t care.

My readers are often asking for safe income ideas. For stocks that pay dividends and never drop in price. It’s a very difficult task, but not quite impossible.

For most long-term investors who want big dividends–I’m talking 6%, 7% and even 8%+ current yields–I recommend holding safe dividend-paying bonds and funds through any market turbulence.

Big dividends are the rubber duckies of the investing world. Wall Street hysteria may push their prices underwater for days or weeks at a time, but as the months and years pass these stocks bounce back to the surface. Let’s revisit our dividend machine from steps two and five. Did its investors even realize we had a market collapse in the fourth quarter of 2018? No.

Q4 2018’s Dividend Rubber Duckie

There’s nothing quite like a pullback-proof dividend machine! And if it’s “2008-proof” then even better. After all, we’re 11 years older now and few of us can afford a 50% drawdown.

If you need big income without the drawdowns, I do love the short and long-term prospects for five 2008-proof dividend payers yielding an average of 7.5%. If you’re worried about a repeat of 2008 (and again let’s be honest, who isn’t), here are five solid payouts you can purchase today without worrying about an overdue pullback (or worse, an all-out crash).

Introducing the “2008-Proof” Income Portfolio Paying 7.5%

The “cash or bear market” no-win quandary inspired me to put together my 5-stock “2008-Proof” portfolio, which I’m going to GIVE you today.

These 5 income wonders deliver 2 things most “blue-chip pretenders” don’t, such as:

1. Rock-solid (and growing) 7.5% average cash dividends (more than my portfolio’s average).
2. A share price that doesn’t crumble beneath your feet while you’re collecting these massive payouts. In fact, you can bank on 7% to 15% yearly price upside from these five “steady Eddie” picks.

With the Dow regularly lurching a stomach-churning 1,000 points (or more) in a single day during pullbacks, I’m sure a safe—and growing—7.5% every single year would have a lot of appeal.

And remember, 7.5% is just the average! One of these titans pays a SAFE 8.5%.

Think about that for a second: buy this incredible stock now and every single year, nearly 9% of your original buy boomerangs straight back to you in CASH.

If that’s not the very definition of safety, I don’t know what is. These five stout stocks have sailed through meltdown after meltdown with their share prices intact, doling out huge cash dividends the entire time. Owners of these amazing “2008-proof” plays might have wondered what all the fuss was about!

These five “2008-proof” wonders give you the best of both worlds: a 7.5% CASH dividend that jumps year in and year out (every year), with your feet firmly planted on a share price that holds steady in a market inferno and floats higher when stocks go Zen.

Editor's Note: The stock market is way up – and that’s terrible news for us dividend investors. Yields haven’t been this low in decades! But there are still plenty of great opportunities to secure meaningful income if you know where to look. Brett Owens' latest report reveals how you can easily (and safely) rake in 8%+ dividends and never worry about drawing down your capital again. Click here for full details!

Source: Contrarian Outlook

Your 2% bonds are going to make you broke. You need to buy these safe, higher paying dividends instead.

We’ll get to these “real yields” (up to 9.3%!) in a moment. First, let’s recap. Treasury yields just took their biggest bath in weeks, sending the 10-year T-note to 2%. Less than a year ago, the 10-year was flirting with (a not exactly nosebleed) 3%.

And now that Fed chair Jay Powell has fallen in love with the doves (whether by choice or by force), he’s going to keep rates low for a long time. Which means bonds will have no place in a retirement portfolio geared towards income.

It wasn’t always this way. Decades ago, bonds rightfully earned their reputation as a source of not just safe, but substantial income that could actually support a high-quality retirement.

But Times, They’ve Been A-Changin’

But for nearly a decade, investors subject to traditional wisdom have been put in peril. They’ve been told that bonds are safe, that they’re “wealth preservers.” However, they now yield so little that their income is almost completely gobbled up by inflation, and their paltry coupons don’t even support basic necessities.

Put another way: If you rely on plain-Jane bonds in retirement, you’ll be underwater paying for even the most bare-bones lifestyle.

The table below shows the monthly income from a $1 million nest egg 100% invested in Treasuries, as well as the average Social Security paycheck, stacked up against a list of basic retirement costs compiled by NerdWallet.

Bond investors come up $380 shy each and every month under this low-frills budget. And even if they didn’t spend a penny in “entertainment,” they’d still be broke.

This “new normal” requires a different set of income strategies. You need better yields and substantial payout growth to make sure you’re ahead of the inflation curve.

Of course, you’re not going to get those from Uncle Sam at 2%. You will, however, find them in this five-pack of bigger paying bonds.

BlackRock Core Bond Trust (BHK)
Type: Multi-Sector
Distribution Yield: 5.6%

The BlackRock Core Bond Trust (BHK) closed-end fund (CEF) lives up to its name, providing a core collection of primarily investment-grade bonds. Investment-grade corporates make up about a third of the portfolio, with double-digit holdings in U.S. government bonds, junk debt and agency mortgages. It also holds developed- and emerging-market debt, securitized products, bank loans and more.

About three-quarters of the portfolio is rated BBB or above, so quality is no issue. And you even have roughly 15% exposure to international debt, which gives you a splash of geographic diversity.

A core ETF such as the iShares Core Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG) will offer typically a little better overall credit quality, but less than half the yield. That’s the power of closed-end funds, which can use leverage and wily active management to juice returns and distributions.

A 7% discount to the fund’s net asset value (NAV) would seem to cinch the deal. After all, who wouldn’t want broad bond-market exposure with 2x the yield for 93 cents on the dollar?

The problem is that there are better options. BHK has delivered 7.1% in annual total returns since inception, versus a 7.6% category average. Plus it has underperformed in most other time periods, too.

Luckily, BlackRock has more to offer, as I’ll show you in a minute.

Calamos Convertible & High Income Fund (CHY)
Type: Multi-Sector
Distribution Yield: 9.3%

Calamos offers another type of somewhat-blended fixed income, though it’s far from the “core” allocation you’d get via BHK.

The Calamos Convertible & High Income Fund (CHY) invests in a portfolio of convertible securities and other high-yield fixed income instruments. Convertible securities are the lion’s share at 57%, followed by corporate bonds at 32%.

Convertible bonds get very little press. They’re like traditional bonds in that they make regular, fixed coupon payments. But as the name implies, they can be converted–into common stock. So, you can enjoy the income of bonds with the potential upside of equities.

While convertibles’ yields are typically less than regular bonds, CHY’s other holdings, as well as a hefty amount of leverage, help fuel a massive distribution of more than 9% despite a slight reduction in the payout late last year. Its 7.7% annualized total return since inception is in line with the category average.

A 3% discount to NAV is a bargain considering CHY has traded at a premium on average over the past year.

Convertibles Are Cruising in 2019

BlackRock Taxable Municipal Bond Trust (BBN)
Type: Taxable Municipal
Distribution Yield: 6.1%

It’s hard to read “taxable municipal bond” without doing a double-take. Isn’t the whole appeal of a municipal bond the fact that you get to pull a fast one on the IRS?

Sure, tax-free munis can offer smaller yields thanks to that tax benefit. But what happens when you collect that income in a tax-advantaged account like an IRA?

That’s right: You lose municipal bonds’ primary perk.

Enter the BlackRock Taxable Municipal Bond Trust (BBN), which invests at least 80% of its assets in taxable munis, including Build America Bonds. The fund can, if necessary, invest in other assets, from Treasuries to even tax-exempt bonds, but it mostly stays faithful to its charge.

There’s plenty to like here. BBN is able to juice a 6.1% yield its taxable municipal bonds, which it has converted into a 9.4% average annual total return since inception. That’s better than the category mark by 50 basis points. And you can purchase that outperformance at a tidy little discount of about 4% to NAV right now.

That makes BBN an unorthodox but nonetheless attractive buy.

High Taxable Muni Yields Get BBN Over the Hump

Cohen & Steers Limited Duration Preferred & Income (LDP)
Type: Preferred
Distribution Yield: 7.6%

I love preferred stocks. These under-covered, under-loved “hybrid” securities fall well off the radar of many investors. But for those in the know, they’re a dependable source of high yield.

Cohen & Steers skims a lesser-traveled area of the preferred world with its Limited Duration Preferred & Income (LDP) closed-end fund, which, as the name suggests, invests in low-duration preferreds. Just like many investors will duck into low-duration bonds to fight off interest-rate risk, they can tap into this fund when they’re worried about rising rates.

Given the Fed’s current disposition, that’s a big strike against it for now. So is a mere 2% discount that sits below its 52-week average discount of about 5%. (In other words, we’re likely to see this fund trading at a bigger bargain down the road.)

But I always make sure to have a plan for every market condition, and that includes an eventual return to rising rates, whenever that might be. Under that condition, LDP and its collection of about 150 holdings–including preferreds from JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Bank of America (BAC)–will be the right way to play this asset class.

BlackRock Corporate High Yield Fund (HYT)
Type: High Yield
Distribution Yield: 8.1%

Junk debt has looked less like a fixed-income product and more like a hard-charging blue chip in 2019. That has led to stellar returns for the likes of the BlackRock Corporate High Yield Fund (HYT).

BlackRock’s HYT: Don’t Throw This Junk Away!

HYT’s more than 1,100 holdings aren’t exclusively junk debt, of course. While 83% of the fund is dedicated to junk, another 11% of assets are piled into term loans, with a peppering of collateralized loan obligations, preferred stocks and other assets.

This closed-end fund takes chances, too. Only a little more than a third of the fund is in the highest credit-quality level of junk (BB); much more is in B (45%), and another 14% is dedicated to CCC-rated bonds. That’s much farther down the ladder than what you get in typical junk index funds such as iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) and SPDR Bloomberg Barclays High Yield Bond ETF (JNK). BlackRock’s managers double down on those risks, too, with a healthy 28% leverage ratio.

The chutzpah is worth it. BlackRock Corporate High Yield has stomped its category return, 8.3%-6.7%, since inception. And anyone who steps into the fund today can buy HYT’s high-performing assets at a 9% discount.

How Retirees Can Collect $3,125 Per Month in Dividends Alone

These CEFs all have one important trait in common: They distribute cash to shareholders not every quarter, but every month.

That’s a boon to retirees who will have to pay all their monthly bills with retirement income.

But how much will you need every month to get by?

The experts at Merrill Lynch say you need a $738,400 nest egg to retire. The talking heads on CNBC and Fox Business will tell you the magic number is $1 million or $1.5 million. Suze Orman collectively dropped our jaws when she said “You need at least $5 million, or $6 million. Really, you might need $10 million.”

$10 million?

They’re right—if you invest in low-yield bonds or the types of so-so-yielding blue-chip stocks that the financial media deems as “safe.” But there’s nothing safe about collecting so little income in retirement that you have to start taking large chunks out of your nest egg, which in turn saps your income potential even more.

Editor's Note: The stock market is way up – and that’s terrible news for us dividend investors. Yields haven’t been this low in decades! But there are still plenty of great opportunities to secure meaningful income if you know where to look. Brett Owens' latest report reveals how you can easily (and safely) rake in 8%+ dividends and never worry about drawing down your capital again. Click here for full details!

Source: Investor Place

I know I don’t have to tell you it’s tough (and very frustrating) trying to get any kind of income stream from your savings these days.

The average S&P 500 stock yields just 1.9%. That’s not even enough to cover inflation!

Treasuries? The 10-year note yields an almost equally pathetic 2.3%.

But there are still safe 7%+ dividends to be had—even in the “income desert” we’re living in now. I’ll show you three funds yielding up to 8.5% (more than 4 times the typical S&P 500 yield) in a second.

Dividends like those can let you clock out on a nest egg that’s far smaller than advisers say you need. I’m talking $550K—and maybe less. Here are two simple strategies for pulling it off:

• Go contrarian: Buy safe, 7%+-paying funds when they’re out of favor (I’ll give you a simple way to determine this shortly) and hold them through any market.
• “No Withdrawal”: We’ll build a portfolio that can let you retire on dividends alone. Because when you’re pulling in, say, a 7.5% average yield, you can generate a $40,000 income stream on just a $550K nest egg.
   
  For many folks, that’s enough to punch out, collect their dividend checks and ignore the market’s daily swings altogether!

Better yet, I’ve done the work for you.

Here are three overlooked funds yielding up to 8.5%. All three are what I call “pullback proof”: they hold the line during corrections like the “May massacre” we just saw.

High-Yield Pick No. 1: A “Preferred” 7% Dividend Paid Monthly

My first fund holds preferred shares, which are a perfect substitute for the “common” shares you probably own today.

A company’s preferred stock usually pays a much higher dividend than the “common” shares most folks buy. So by simply “trading in” your common shares for preferreds, you can double (or more) your income stream while still investing in the same company.

The tradeoff is usually less upside, but if you buy your preferreds through a well-run closed-end fund (CEF) —which I recommend—the cash return from your dividends can be so high you might not even notice.

Consider the Flaherty & Crumrine Total Return Fund (FLC) (payer of a monthly 7% dividend): it’s delivered a 214% total return (including dividends) since inception in 2003, driven by its huge cash payouts:

A Huge Gain—Mostly in Cash

And talk about pullback proof! Look at how it performed over the past month:

The Ultimate “Pullback-Proof” Play

And check out the total return FLC has posted since September 20, 2018, when last year’s collapse started.

FLC Shows Its Mettle

As you can see, the fund’s return didn’t drop nearly as far as the S&P 500 in the meltdown, and shareholders are actually up 10% since that correction started.

Finally, let’s talk upside.

With CEFs, the key number to watch is the gap between the fund’s market price and the value of the assets in its portfolio, known as the net asset value, or NAV.

As I write this, FLC’s discount stands at 4%, and it’s traded at narrower discounts (and even hefty premiums) over the last five years, so we can look forward to price gains as that discount creeps ever closer to par—and beyond.

High-Yield Play No. 2: A Top REIT Fund Yielding 7.1%

If your portfolio is low on preferreds and real estate investment trusts, you can grab both in one buy with the Cohen & Steers REIT & Preferred Income Fund (RNP).

RNP has crushed both the S&P 500 and the REIT benchmark Vanguard REIT ETF (VNQ) since inception in 2004—no mean feat for an income play like this.

A High-Yield Market Beater

And thanks to its huge dividend (current yield: 7.1%), a huge slice of that gain was in cash.

This fund taps its REIT holdings (51% of the portfolio) and preferred stocks (49%) to give us that steady 7.1% dividend (also paid monthly). And as with FLC, RNP has held up nicely this past month:

RNP Sails Through the “May Massacre” …

Also like FLC, it fell far less than the market during last fall’s correction, and bounced back faster, handing investors a nice 10% return.

… And the Fall Collapse, Too

Finally, you can grab this one at an 8.5% discount to NAV, a discount that can’t last, considering RNP’s “no-drama” approach and long history of crushing the S&P 500.

High-Yield Play No. 3: An 8.5% Dividend With Upside

The Western Asset High Income Fund II (HIX) is a high-yield bond fund with a long history of strong performance, having tripled in value (including dividends) since its IPO in the late 1990s, crushing the S&P 500.

This Fund Can’t Stop Climbing

HIX gives investors that strong return while yielding 8.5%. Management firm Legg Mason, which has been in the fixed-income business for 48 years, generates HIX’s 8.5% dividend through a portfolio that includes emerging-market bonds, high-yield corporate bonds, investment-grade corporates, bank loans and a small cash holding.

That high total return and consistent share-price performance make HIX worth your attention at any time, but now that it’s trading at a 9% discount to NAV, it’s particularly compelling.

That’s because the fund has traded near (or even above) par with its NAV for months on end in the past. So if you buy HIX now and wait for its discount to evaporate, you’d be looking at 9.9% gains on top of your 8.5% dividend stream.

5 More “Pullback-Proof” Plays Yielding Up to 9.6%

These three funds are just the start. And to tell you the truth, they’re not even my favorite “pullback-proof” buys now.

Those would be the 5 stocks in my just-released “Pullback-Proof” retirement portfolio, including one stock—a conservative lender with stellar loan performance—paying a “hidden” 9.6% dividend.

I say this stock’s dividend is hidden because its current yield—the one you’d see on Google Finance and Yahoo Finance—clocks in at 8.1%. That’s already massive, but the current yields on most screeners don’t account for one critical thing:

Special dividends.

And this REIT has a long history of special payouts. Check it out:

An 8.1% Dividend—and More

Add in this company’s last special payout, and its “real” yield pops to that incredible 9.6% I just mentioned.

Here’s what that payout means in dollars and cents: if you had $100K in this cash machine, you’d get $9,600 back in dividend cash in the past year alone—and I expect a similar total payout this year (this REIT usually rolls out its special dividend in the fall).

And when I say this stout dividend is “pullback-proof,” I mean it: check out how this stock performed in 2018—a year most investors would rather forget:

My Pick Soars in a Rough Year

That’s right: when the rest of the market tumbled, this pick’s owners actually bagged a near-14% return!

I’m ready to share the name of this pick and my 4 other top “Pullback-Proof” buys with you now.

These 5 reliable CEFs are similar to the 3 funds I showed you above, but with two critical differences: they’re set for stronger price upside (7% to 15% in the next year alone) and faster payout growth, too!

And you’re about to get the full story on each of them.

Did the latest tariff tiff set the stage for the next pullback in stocks? Will this bull market actually die of old age?

The macro picture is dicey and stock valuations are pricey, but we must stay invested. The stock market goes up about two-thirds of the time. Permabears miss out on compounding and it’s not as easy to be a part-time bear as it sounds.

To illustrate this let’s consider a study by Hulbert Financial. The firm looked at the best “peak market timers”–the gurus who correctly forecasted the bursting of the Internet bubble in March 2000 and the Great Recession in October 2007.

These were the clairvoyant advisors who had their clients out of stocks and mostly in cash when the S&P 500 was about to be chopped in half. Surely their clients did great over the long haul, given their capital was largely intact at the market bottoms, right?

Wrong. None of these advisors turned in top performances. The reason? While they were good at timing tops, they were terrible at timing bottoms! The bearish advisors didn’t get their clients back into stocks anywhere near the bottom. They had their capital intact, but they didn’t deploy it–and they largely missed out on the epic bull markets that followed these crashes.

Think about the advisors and investors who sold in late December when the “bear market” became official. They moved to cash at the worst possible moment and have been on the sidelines waiting for a low risk “retest” of the lows. Mr. Market loves to confuse the most amount of people, and he really outdid himself this time!

Barely a Bear Market…

… And Right Back to a Bull!

Now we can be smart about staying in the market. While bull markets may not die of old age per se, this one is ten years old. They don’t run forever, so we should focus on pullback-proof names. Here are five rules to follow for 15% per year returns regardless of what the broader market does.

Recession-Proof Rule #1: Trust Your Dividends

Secure dividend yields are truly the “rubber duckies” of the investing world. Mr. Market can push them underwater for a period of time, but eventually, they rocket back up to the surface.

Let’s consider Contrarian Income Report favorite Omega Healthcare Investors (OHI), a big paying landlord in the skilled nursing space. It’s rewarded CIR subscribers with steady 8.1% returns per year, mostly from well-funded quarterly payouts. Anytime OHI rallies I get questions about whether we should book profits. Well, we rarely want to sell a great dividend stock like this–even when our crystal ball forecasts impending doom.

We’ll rewind 11 years to the top of the last extended bull market. If you were savvy enough to time the top in 2007, you would still have been doing yourself a disservice by selling your OHI shares (not least, how would know when to have “gotten back in?”)!

This Dividend Payer Barely Went Below the Water

Five years later, as the S&P 500 barely recovered its crash losses, OHI investors had enjoyed 133% returns (including steady, fat payouts throughout). And while the presence of a dividend does not guarantee protection from losses, examples like this one show that payout-focused investors have a serious edge in the markets because:

Buying stocks for their dividends alone makes day-to-day price action irrelevant.

Of course, you know this already! And you’re probably already wondering how we turn OHI’s 8% returns into 15% per year, so let’s get into rule number two.

Recession-Proof Rule #2: Buy Fast Growing Dividends

Dividends are magnets that pull their share prices along with them. If you’re looking for the stock market’s tail that wags the dog, pay attention to the payouts attached to a given share price.

Regardless of what the stock market does during any given trading session (or month, or whatever), share prices eventually follow their dividends higher. For example, let’s consider Texas Instruments (TXN), which has increased its payout (orange line below) by an amazing 600% over the last decade. Its stock price (blue line) was pulled higher by its dividend:

TXN’s Dividend Magnet

My Hidden Yields subscribers have made 55% in two years from TXN. Two generous dividend raises have provided much of this fuel. And the kicker? We bought when shares were “due” to pop because they had fallen behind their dividend curve.

Recession-Proof Rule #3: Find the Lagging Stock Price

The best time to buy a stock like TXN is nearly anytime. But we can “cherry pick” our entries (and put option sales) by focusing on times when TXN’s price falls behind its payout curve.

Regular readers will remember Medical Properties Trust (MPW), a hospital landlord we bought and later sold for 105% total returns. MPW’s dividend magnet was part of our secret, and the fact that we bought when the price was lagging dividend growth and sold after it had overtaken it.  The “up” arrows below show good times to be a buyer, while the “down” arrows indicate times to hold or sell:

The Cues from a Dividend Magnet

Recession-Proof Rule #4: Buybacks Are a Nice Bonus

Share repurchases can provide fuel for dividend growth. When a firm buys back stock, it saves cash on dividends because it doesn’t have to “dish out” for those retired shares.

Buybacks today are the gifts that keep on giving tomorrow. By reducing the share count, they make every “per share” metric of profit and cash flow look better. Plus, they make it easier to grow the dividends because there are fewer shares to pay them to!

Buybacks work best when the stock itself is cheap. After all, the price you pay for something always matters. Smart management teams take advantage of depressed stock prices to provide their investors with a nice bonus.

Recession-Proof Rule #5: Low Payout Ratios: Where the Party’s At

Some dividend-income investors think they are following this strategy by purchasing dividend aristocrats, or stocks that have increased their payouts every year for 25 straight years:

“Brett, I don’t own the S&P 500 index for income. I choose the best companies in the index, the ones whose dividends have gone up and up. The dividend aristocrats.”

Problem is, many of these monarchs have their best years behind them. Check out these payout ratios, or the percentage of profits that these aristocrats are paying out as dividends:

Sky High Payout Ratios

The 9.5% average dividend growth rate above is nice but it’s not sustainable. These firms are already paying 80% of their profits as payouts, when anything more than 50% can spell trouble! This means their upside potential for the next five years is likely limited.

So, let’s look past these paupers for lesser-known bargains that are primed to double their dividends and prices over the next five years. Some will double within three!

How is this possible? These five stocks are only paying 20% of their earnings as dividends, which means they could multiply their payouts by 2X, 3X or even 4X today and still have room to grow without risk of a dividend cut.

They won’t do it overnight, however. These firms will bump their dividends by 15%, 20% and even 25% or more per year. Which means their stock prices will eventually follow, and investors who buy today will double their money with these safe dividends.

7 Dividend Stocks That’ll Double Your Money Every Few Years

Since inception, our Hidden Yields portfolio has exceeded our lofty 15% benchmark, returning 16.4% per year. This means our inaugural subscribers are well on their way to doubling their money with safe dividend stocks. With patience and persistence, you too can enjoy the same types of returns by following our dividend double strategy.

Today, I want to share seven of my recession-proof “Hidden Yield Stocks” with you.

My research indicates each of these investments could easily pay you 15% per year. That’s enough to double your money in under 5 years. Imagine, turning a retirement ‘pot’ of $250,000 into $500,000… or… $500,000 into $1,000,000… and on it goes.

Imagine no more fear of your savings running dry… no more worrying about wild market swings or crashes… no more risky-bets on penny-stocks or cryptos… no more penny-pinching in your golden years.

So, if you’re not quite as wealthy as you hoped you’d be… if you wish you had more money in your retirement account… and… if you’re looking for safe, secure growth over the next 5, 10, 15, even 20 years—as well as predictable income—this could be the most important investment advice you ever read.

Editor's Note: The stock market is way up – and that’s terrible news for us dividend investors. Yields haven’t been this low in decades! But there are still plenty of great opportunities to secure meaningful income if you know where to look. Brett Owens' latest report reveals how you can easily (and safely) rake in 8%+ dividends and never worry about drawing down your capital again. Click here for full details!

We retirees and soon-to-be retirees have a dilemma. The traditional pension is just about gone. Social Security won’t support the lifestyle most of us want. We are left to our own devices.

But even if we do build up a fat balance in a 401(k) or other company retirement plan, how do we make it last? Especially when the bank pays “zero point nothing.” Today, you can’t find anything that pays significant “interest.”

This is becoming a crisis in the US. We are told that stocks provide the best returns over the long term, but retirees need income now. Most retirement investors prefer dividend income to long-term gains, but yields haven’t been this low in decades! The S&P 500 pays a measly 2% or so today. If you have a million-dollar portfolio, that’s a lousy $20,000 per year in income, or $385 a week. That’s no retirement.

Now some dividend-income investors protest, “But I don’t own the S&P 500 index for income. I choose the best companies in the index, the ones whose dividends have gone up and up. The dividend aristocrats.” But are they true monarchs or mere pretenders to the throne.

The problem with growing your dividends for a minimum of 25 consecutive years is that’s a lot of time for your own profit growth to slow down. That means many of your dividend increases are cutting even further into your earnings. You don’t want to break the bank, so your hikes shrink over time–a couple percent here, a couple percent there, just to keep your Aristocrat lapel pin.

I’ll let you in on a secret: Sometimes, the best place to make your dividend-growth play is on the ground floor, in companies that have really only begun to scratch the surface. In fact, two of the picks I’m about to show you have been paying dividends for less than five years.

Let me show you the difference between some of the largest blue-chip Dividend Aristocrats and my plucky group of five turbo-charged dividend growers:

These Blue Chips Are Crawling to the Finish Line

The 9.5% growth rate above is nice but it’s not sustainable. These firms are already paying 80% of their profits as payouts! This stat is great for the last five years, but awful for the next five–and that’s what we care about.

So let’s look past these paupers for lesser-known bargains that are primed to double their over the next five years. Some will double within three!

How is this possible? These five stocks are only paying 20% of their earnings as dividends, which means they could multiply their payouts by 2X, 3X or even 4X today.

They won’t do it overnight however. These firms will bump their dividends by 15%, 20% and even 25% or more per year. Which means their stock prices will probably follow, and investors who buy today will double their money with these safe dividends.

Ally Financial (ALLY)
Dividend Yield: 2.3%
Payout Ratio: 19.0%
5-Year Dividend Growth: 28.6%

Ally Financial (ALLY) as we currently know it has only been around since 2010, but the company has roots going all the way back to 1919 as General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) – the financing-providing arm of automaker General Motors (GM).

The company still has extensive automotive operations, providing financing for more than 4 million customers across 18,000 dealerships. But Ally also offers online banking, vehicle insurance and credit cards, among other products. It also re-entered the mortgage business in 2016 via its direct-to-consumer Ally Home, and in mid-April, it announced a partnership with Better.com to launch a digital mortgage platform.

Ally Financial’s top and bottom lines have ebbed and flowed over the past few years, but things are starting to perk up, and the pros are starting to take notice. The company beat Q1 earnings estimates in April, prompting a couple “Buy” calls. That included one from Oppenheimer analyst Dominick Gabriele, who wrote, “We see a long runway for earnings given continued strong management execution that some investors are only just beginning to appreciate.”

The company started dividends relatively recently, at 8 cents per share in 2016, and has already more than doubled it at its current 17 cents per share. That history–as well as optimistic profit-growth estimates of 10% annually through 2024–would almost seem to guarantee breakneck dividend growth going forward … right?

In early April, Ally announced a massive $1.25 billion repurchase program for 2019 that was far more than what most analysts expected. When you factor in that, the financial stock’s total “cash return” payout ratio is actually a hair above 100%. So yes, Ally does indeed have the means to make major dividend increases going forward … but only if it’s less aggressive about buybacks.

Ally’s Dividend Is a Mere Morsel of its Profits 

Valvoline (VVV)
Dividend Yield: 2.2%
Payout Ratio: 28.2%
5-Year Dividend Growth: 30.1%

Valvoline (VVV) is a global juggernaut in its relatively niche area of the market. It offers automotive services and supplies lubricants to more than 140 countries, including 1,170 quick-lube stores in the U.S. It has roots going all the way back to 1866, though the company is a relative newbie on the public markets, executing its IPO in 2016.

The dividend is just as fresh, so its five-year growth is extrapolated out from its original 4.9-cent dividend to today’s 10.6-cent payout.

That’s a lightning-quick doubler!

The stock hasn’t been nearly so spry, however. VVV has bounced back and forth since it came public, and shares sit about 16% lower than their IPO price. Particularly troubling was its fiscal first-quarter report in February. Not only did Valvoline miss the mark on both earnings and revenues, but it announced a restructuring to “reduce costs, simplify processes and ensure that the organization’s structure and resource allocation are focused on key growth initiatives.” The initiative should save the company about $40 million to $50 million pretax each year starting with fiscal 2020.

Valvoline surely has the room to keep the pedal down on its dividend, though the company’s focus now appears to be reinvigorating growth. I would wait to see green shoots from its restructuring efforts before even considering a move into VVV.

Aflac (AFL)
Dividend Yield: 2.2%
Payout Ratio: 27.6%
5-Year Dividend Growth: 7.1%

Income investors should know that earnings payout ratios for dividends don’t always tell the whole story. Net income can be manipulated, after all. So I also like to look at free cash flow payout ratios. (You can calculate free cash flow simply by subtracting capital expenditures from operating cash flow.)

Aflac (AFL) is, and has long been, a reliable dividend stock on that and several other fronts.

Aflac, which we all know from its ubiquitous duck commercials, is a leading provider of supplemental insurance – things such as dental and vision plans, short-term disability insurance and life insurance – serving more than 50 million customers.

The company has been slowly but steadily growing for years, though 2017 earnings spiked thanks to a considerable tax benefit. Analysts see more of the same going forward, with low-single-digit profit-growth estimates for the next couple of years. That’s fine. Aflac is an insurer, not a chipmaker.

That reliable growth has translated into a higher dividend each and every year since 2000. And given payout levels like these, shareholders can count on Aflac continuing to plump up the dividend.

Aflac Has It Covered 

Chemours (CC)
Dividend Yield: 2.7%
Payout Ratio: 15.4%
5-Year Dividend Growth: 69.9%

Chemours (CC) is one of the byproducts of years of wheeling and dealing by DuPont … which, following a merger with Dow is now DowDuPont (DWDP) … which recently spun off Dow Inc. (DOW).

That confusing bit of history aside, Chemours–the “performance chemicals” division of DuPont that was spun off in 2015–is pretty straightforward, and really fascinating. For instance, it’s the world’s largest producer of high-quality titanium dioxide, which goes into coatings in automobiles, marine craft and airplanes. It also makes fluor0products such as Teflon, and chemical solutions that cover a wide range of applications, such as acids for semiconductor manufacturing and sodium cyanide production for gold and silver miners.

Chemours’ “performance” isn’t limited to its products. While CC shares had a nasty start in their first year of trading, they’ve exploded by more than 525% off their July 2016 lows, versus 48% returns for the S&P 500 in that time.

The dividend didn’t start to get off the ground until a couple years after the spinoff. What started as a mere 3-cent payout finally took off with a massive jump to 17 cents in 2018, then to 25 cents that same year, where the payout stands today.

Pricing weakness in some of its products have hobbled its performance, and the stock, over the past year, and analysts see earnings weakening this year before returning to 2018 levels in 2020. That’s a lot of sideways movement, which means Chemours would have to inflate its payout ratio to keep up with its red-hot income growth. But considering it distributes just 15% of its net income as dividends … that’s no biggie.

Wendy’s (WEN)
Dividend Yield: 2.1%
Payout Ratio: 18.1%
5-Year Dividend Growth: 12.8%

Baconator slinger Wendy’s (WEN) has really come into its own over the past three years.

The House That Dave Thomas Built was only the eighth-biggest fast food chain as of QSR magazine’s August roundup–behind both McDonald’s (MCD) and Restaurant Brands International’s (QSR) Burger King. But it has the happiest shareholders.

While its actual financial results have been up and down for years, they’re generally trending upward, and analysts expect that to continue this year and next. One of the catalysts for 2019 is a less value-focused environment in the fast-food arena, which is tailor-made for Wendy’s more premium positioning compared to the likes of McDonald’s and Yum! Brands’ (YUM) Taco Bell.

Wendy’s also has managed to double its dividend since 2014 to its current dime per share without stretching the purse strings. The company has a lean sub-20% payout ratio and could double the payout again overnight without dropping a bead of sweat.

I obviously don’t expect that, but I do expect the next few Februaries – when Wendy’s announces its payout increases – to be full of fireworks.

7 More Dividend Stocks That’ll Double Your Money Every Few Years

Since inception, my Hidden Yields portfolio has returned 16.3% per year. This means our inaugural subscribers are well on their way to doubling their money with safe dividend stocks! With patience and persistence, you can enjoy the same types of returns by following our dividend double strategy.

Today, I want to share seven of my recession-proof ‘Hidden Yield Stocks’ with you.

My research indicates each of these investments could easily pay you 15% per year. That’s enough to double your money in under 5 years. Imagine, turning a retirement ‘pot’ of $250,000 into $500,000… or… $500,000 into $1,000,000… and on it goes.

Imagine no more fear of your savings running dry… no more worrying about wild market swings or crashes… no more risky-bets on penny-stocks or cryptos… no more penny-pinching in your golden years.

So, if you’re not quite as wealthy as you hoped you’d be… if you wish you had more money in your retirement account… and… if you’re looking for safe, secure growth over the next 5, 10, 15, even 20 years—as well as predictable income—this could be the most important investment advice you ever read.

Editor's Note: The stock market is way up – and that’s terrible news for us dividend investors. Yields haven’t been this low in decades! But there are still plenty of great opportunities to secure meaningful income if you know where to look. Brett Owens' latest report reveals how you can easily (and safely) rake in 8%+ dividends and never worry about drawing down your capital again. Click here for full details!

Source: Contrarian Outlook

“Jenny, I can imagine. My wife makes fun of me when I ice my knees after basketball games,” I confided to my friend and favorite bartender.

Her husband, no “young chicken” anymore either she joked, was sore from his own martial arts contest. She bought him a CBD “bath bomb” to help with the aches of being active and middle-aged.

Always the sucker for natural remedies and bartender wisdom, I teed up an Amazon selection for pain and inflammation. Just 26 hours later, I was massaging hemp, turmeric and MSM into my patella tendon (about an hour before tipoff):

BO’s Anti-Inflammatory Pick

“You’re a terrible scientist,” my wife reprimanded me after I bragged about my patella’s comeback in my postgame recap. “You’re supposed to change one variable at a time. You changed everything.”

She was right, of course. I had new basketball shoes and wore a knee brace for the first time in years. I’d changed three variables, had no idea which was the miracle cure. I was left with no choice but to keep my three member “knee team” together! (Who knows how it’s working, as long as it is working, right?)

Hemp has been a popular free agent addition for many aging athletes since its increasing legalization. As you know the crop has other popular uses, too. Mine is more mundane, yet probably fitting for a dividend analyst!

The plant was used in China nearly 5,000 years ago and is enjoying a good old-fashioned American boom thanks to state governments. I live just a few blocks from our neighborhood dispensary yet I wouldn’t have thought to get a doctor’s note for the salve. Put it in on Amazon Prime, though, and it’s in my cart in minutes.

Now what about weed dividends? We’ve had plenty of readers write in asking and, with “pot holiday” April 20 just days away, I thought it’d be fitting for us to review the current crop of dividends.

The Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences Index ETF (HMMJ) just paid its seventh quarterly dividend last Wednesday. Its $0.3811 per share payout is good for a generous 5.1% trailing yield. Plus investors have been as high as a kite since inception, enjoying 160% total returns versus 22% for the S&P 500:

An ETF Contact High

But where exactly do these dividends come from? Most of the stocks the fund holds are not profitable. And the lone dividend payer Scotts Miracle-Gro (SMG) in the fund is only 7.2% of assets.

HMMJ actually makes its money by lending its shares to short sellers. Remember, when you sell a stock “short,” you are actually borrowing shares so that you can sell them at their current market price. Later, you must buy back these shares to “cover” your short position.

Normally it doesn’t cost that much money to short a stock. But the mostly-unprofitable shares that HMMJ holds are in high demand by short sellers today, and the ETF itself holds much of the supply. So, the fund’s “side hustle” of renting out its holdings is booming.

But there is no actual cash flow backing up its distribution. Nor is there any guarantee that its “short lending” business will remain as robust in future quarters. To paraphrase Prince, this distribution is just a party and parties weren’t meant to last.

How about Scotts, which does manufacture actual products? It’s more of a “pick and shovel” play on weed. The company doesn’t peddle the crop directly but sells growing equipment. Scotts stock pays 2.7% today and, while the firm raises its dividend regularly to the tune of about 5% per year.

As much hype as there is around weed, the power of the “dividend magnet”—the gravity exerted by a payout on its stock price—is even stronger. While Scotts has hiked its dividend by 17% over the last three years, its stock price has risen by the exact same amount:

The All-Powerful Dividend Magnet 

The firm’s subsidiary for cannabis growers has, troublingly, not been growing organically. It’s been more hype than hemp to date for this baked maker of lawn and garden products.

A better backdoor play on the sector is landlord Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR). Remember, while many states have legalized pot, it remains illegal under federal law. Financing is challenging for weed peddlers, so many sell their properties to IIPR to get cash in the door for their operations. The firms then rent their former buildings back from IIPR.

Why IIPR? It’s the only real estate investment trust (REIT) that works with weed growers. As a publicly traded company, it gets to borrow money at much lower rates than it collects from its cannabis clients. As a REIT, IIPR is obligated to dish most of its profits back to its shareholders as dividends. The result is a good old-fashioned payout boom, a 200% increase in less than two years:

The Landlord’s High

The only “problem” with the chart above is that, if you don’t yet own IIRP, it is now quite expensive to do so. Its price line has run away from its payout line, which is a sign that shares are dangerously overvalued. The stock now pays just 2.1% and trades for an extremely rich 31-times its annual cash flow.

Sure, you may be able to buy IIRP “high” and sell it higher. But that’s a different dividend drug altogether.

Forget dividends you say? Let’s not forget the example that money-losing, no-dividend firm India Globalization Capital (IGC) set for us. IGC found the magic investor formula when they put two investing buzzwords side-by-side:

1. Cannabis, and
2. Blockchain.

The savvy marketers at IGC then introduced an energy drink infused with hemp, and wow, what a rush!

IGC Jumped 10-Fold on Buzzwords

We rational income investors fortunately avoided this clown show. I wrote to you as the blockchain-weed craze was peaking:

We level-headed contrarians should stay away from this circus. In fact, you need to be honest with yourself about the latest weed craze. If you’re tempted at all to buy this junk, it’s better if you change the channel.

Many marketers know that you and your peers are fixating on these parabolic charts. It’s going to end in tears, but they don’t care. They know they can get your attention now with a weed-fueled promise of 100% to 1,000%+ gains and get out while the getting is good.

The epilogue on IGC? Tears would be putting it mildly:

IPC’s Fast Rise and Fall

One of the smartest investors I know is a sweet grandma. She’d never fall for this speculative stuff! Grandma has a modest $387,000 nest egg that is on pace to last forever. No joke.

Recently I was chatting with a reader of mine who manages money for a select group of clients. He’s using my 8% Monthly Payer Portfolio to make a client’s modest savings – a nice grandmother with $387,000 – last longer than she ever dreamed:

“She brought me $387,000,” he said. “And wants to take out $3,000 per month for ten years.”

“Well she’s already withdrawn money for eight months (at $3,000 per month) and her balance has actually grown to $397,000. If the portfolio continues yielding 7% per year plus 2% per year in capital gains, and she withdraws $3,000 per month, it will pay my fees and still last her 27 years!”

Now many retirement experts pitch real estate as the best way to bank monthly income. But this grandma isn’t hustling to collect rent checks, or fix broken light bulbs. She’s simply collecting her “dividend pension” every month, which is 100% funded by her stocks and funds.

Actually her monthly salary is more than 100% financed – which is why her portfolio has grown by $10,000 as she’s withdrawn $3,000 per month.

I’m ready to give you everything you need to know about this life-changing portfolio now. Let’s talk about Grandma’s secret – her 8% monthly dividend superstars (which even have 10% price upside to boot!)

Grandma focuses on the 12 monthly payers in my “8% Monthly Payer Portfolio.” If you’ve got a bit more than she does–say $500,000 invested–it’ll hand you a rock-solid $40,000-a-year income stream. That’s an 8% dividend yield … and it’s easily enough for most folks to retire on.

The best part is you won’t have to go back to “lumpy” quarterly payouts to do it! Of the 19 income studs in this unique portfolio, 12 pay dividends monthly, so you can look forward to the steady stream of $3,333 in income, month in and month out—give or take a couple hundred bucks – on every $500K in capital you’re able to invest.

Editor's Note: The stock market is way up – and that’s terrible news for us dividend investors. Yields haven’t been this low in decades! But there are still plenty of great opportunities to secure meaningful income if you know where to look. Brett Owens' latest report reveals how you can easily (and safely) rake in 8%+ dividends and never worry about drawing down your capital again. Click here for full details!

Source: Contrarian Outlook