Dividend-paying stocks are as close to a “no-brainer” investment as they come. #-ad_banner-#You only need to look back at the last four decades to see just how smart having your money in these income producing machines has been. According to a 42-year study by Ned Davis Research, from 1972 through December 2013, U.S.-based dividend stocks in the S&P 500 returned 9.3% a year on average — far exceeding the 2.3% annual return for S&P stocks that didn’t pay dividends. There’s just one problem with them right now. As dividend stocks have attracted more and more money over the… Read More

Dividend-paying stocks are as close to a “no-brainer” investment as they come. #-ad_banner-#You only need to look back at the last four decades to see just how smart having your money in these income producing machines has been. According to a 42-year study by Ned Davis Research, from 1972 through December 2013, U.S.-based dividend stocks in the S&P 500 returned 9.3% a year on average — far exceeding the 2.3% annual return for S&P stocks that didn’t pay dividends. There’s just one problem with them right now. As dividend stocks have attracted more and more money over the past few years, there’s concern that some have become overvalued. I showed readers quite a few of these widely-held, yet overvalued dividend payers in a recent article. And one of our income investing experts — Amy Calistri, Chief Investment Strategist for StreetAuthority’s newsletter, The Daily Paycheck — first wrote about this troubling trend (along with a few more overvalued dividend stocks she found) over a year ago: Valuations of defensive dividend-paying stocks have become downright lofty. The irony, of course, is that the overcrowding in these “safe”… Read More

I talk to a variety of investors on a daily basis — and most everyone is stuck in a rut. #-ad_banner-#Successful or not, they invest the same way over and over again. Most don’t look beyond what they are already comfortable with, no matter what. The ability to think outside the box is often what differentiates outstanding investors. Venturing beyond your comfort zone into different strategies and types of investments can make the difference between another average year and your best year ever. This is particularly true when it comes to looking for dividend yield. The majority of… Read More

I talk to a variety of investors on a daily basis — and most everyone is stuck in a rut. #-ad_banner-#Successful or not, they invest the same way over and over again. Most don’t look beyond what they are already comfortable with, no matter what. The ability to think outside the box is often what differentiates outstanding investors. Venturing beyond your comfort zone into different strategies and types of investments can make the difference between another average year and your best year ever. This is particularly true when it comes to looking for dividend yield. The majority of income investors are focused only on U.S. stocks — which means they’re missing out on the massive opportunities available beyond America’s borders. In a recent study, mutual fund research firm Lipper found that U.S. stock income funds have $359 billion in assets — with just $13 billion allocated to international stock income funds.  Perhaps even more interesting, of the $1 trillion in dividends paid worldwide in 2013, U.S. companies accounted for 37%. This means that nearly two-thirds of the world’s dividend payouts — 63% — comes from international stocks.  In other words, most American stock investors are missing out… Read More

If you are hoping to be a savvy stock picker when you’re in your 70s, I’ve got good news for you. Seventy-one-year-old legendary fund manager Leon Cooperman, who I profiled last year, remains on top of his game. As I noted then, Cooperman was wrapping up a successful year of investment returns in 2012, and I decided to see how his February 2013 investments turned out. Excluding his investments in yield plays Linn Energy (Nasdaq: LINE), Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI) and Atlas Pipeline Partners (NYSE: APL), which are in the portfolio for income and not capital appreciation, the rest of… Read More

If you are hoping to be a savvy stock picker when you’re in your 70s, I’ve got good news for you. Seventy-one-year-old legendary fund manager Leon Cooperman, who I profiled last year, remains on top of his game. As I noted then, Cooperman was wrapping up a successful year of investment returns in 2012, and I decided to see how his February 2013 investments turned out. Excluding his investments in yield plays Linn Energy (Nasdaq: LINE), Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI) and Atlas Pipeline Partners (NYSE: APL), which are in the portfolio for income and not capital appreciation, the rest of his top holdings are handily beating the market. Cooperman’s Hot Hand Yet recent adjustments in his portfolio suggest Cooperman now views the market in a different context. According to recent filings, Cooperman appears to be eschewing growth stocks and chasing yield — very high yield. Three of his picks sport dividend yields in excess of 10%. Here’s a closer look.  1. Atlas Resource Partners (NYSE: ARP )​ When I looked at Cooperman’s portfolio 15 months ago, he owned roughly 3 million shares of Atlas Pipeline Partners, the master limited partnership (MLP) that controls the oil and gas pipelines of Atlas… Read More

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” — attributed to Theodore Roosevelt Investing for your retirement is easier if you start when you’re young. There’s no denying it. There is no greater friend than time. But I think investment professionals emphasize the time factor so much that older folks feel like they missed the boat — that if they didn’t start investing in their twenties, there is no point starting now. Read More

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” — attributed to Theodore Roosevelt Investing for your retirement is easier if you start when you’re young. There’s no denying it. There is no greater friend than time. But I think investment professionals emphasize the time factor so much that older folks feel like they missed the boat — that if they didn’t start investing in their twenties, there is no point starting now. I can’t tell you how many of my peers have all but given up the hope of retiring. That’s just one reason why I like the story of Anne Scheiber. #-ad_banner-#Anne was in her 50s when she retired from the IRS as an auditor. She had never been promoted the entire time she worked there. Anne’s pension was $3,100 a year. She had also managed to squirrel away $5,000 in savings. It wasn’t until after she retired in the mid-1940s that Anne started a dividend reinvestment portfolio. When she died in 1995, Anne had turned her $5,000 into $22 million. Read More

Bar none, they’re the most elite dividend stocks on Earth. #-ad_banner-#Valued at over $3 billion each, these mega-sized blue-chip companies have managed to pay out dividends for decades. Some have paid a dividend for the past century or even longer. But to earn their coveted status, they’ve had to increase their dividend every year for the past 25 years. And to keep the status, they have to keep paying a larger dividend every year from now on — no easy feat. That’s why only 54 out of the 500 stocks in the S&P 500 have made the cut. Read More

Bar none, they’re the most elite dividend stocks on Earth. #-ad_banner-#Valued at over $3 billion each, these mega-sized blue-chip companies have managed to pay out dividends for decades. Some have paid a dividend for the past century or even longer. But to earn their coveted status, they’ve had to increase their dividend every year for the past 25 years. And to keep the status, they have to keep paying a larger dividend every year from now on — no easy feat. That’s why only 54 out of the 500 stocks in the S&P 500 have made the cut. Appropriately, Standard & Poor’s calls this select group of stocks “Dividend Aristocrats.”  And they’re about the finest dividend stocks money can buy. You already know many of these stocks. They are big-name, cash-rich companies like 3M, Clorox, Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart, Target, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola  and others.  Some investors write these stocks off, thinking that big companies are old news and are done growing. And for many large companies, that may be true.  But not for this group.  Since the index was first introduced in 1989 by Standard & Poor’s, the Dividend Aristocrats have handily outpaced the S&P 500 Index, as you… Read More

Here in the United States, some states are known for their outsized presence in certain industries. For example, California is the center of tech, New York dominates finance… and Texas knows a thing or two about oil, gas and land.   #-ad_banner-#That said, it may come as no surprise that natural resources and real estate are well represented in the portfolio of the University of Texas System, which possesses one of the largest university endowments in the United States.   Headed by the University of Texas Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO, for short), the endowment is the largest public… Read More

Here in the United States, some states are known for their outsized presence in certain industries. For example, California is the center of tech, New York dominates finance… and Texas knows a thing or two about oil, gas and land.   #-ad_banner-#That said, it may come as no surprise that natural resources and real estate are well represented in the portfolio of the University of Texas System, which possesses one of the largest university endowments in the United States.   Headed by the University of Texas Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO, for short), the endowment is the largest public one of its kind in the nation, placing third when taking private colleges into consideration (the first and second spots belong to Harvard and Yale, respectively). With over $20 billion in assets under management, UTIMCO serves 15 schools in the University of Texas System, including UT-Austin and the UT Southwestern Medical Center.   Now in its 19th year of operation, UTIMCO pools its assets into a number of funds and vehicles with varying investment horizons and risk objectives. Since the bulk of the endowment is meant to serve the underlying universities and its students for years and years to come,… Read More

Shares of Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) are finally beginning to percolate, thanks to solid quarterly results and a brightening outlook. A 10% upward move since early March is quite impressive when you consider the beating that many tech stocks have been getting in recent months.#-ad_banner-# Though Cisco is only slowly going to emerge from an extended period of anemic sales growth, it has a powerful weapon in today’s troubled tech stock environment… Cash. Lots of it. Cisco ended its fiscal third quarter with nearly $30 billion in net cash — but it’s having a hard time spending that cash. It… Read More

Shares of Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) are finally beginning to percolate, thanks to solid quarterly results and a brightening outlook. A 10% upward move since early March is quite impressive when you consider the beating that many tech stocks have been getting in recent months.#-ad_banner-# Though Cisco is only slowly going to emerge from an extended period of anemic sales growth, it has a powerful weapon in today’s troubled tech stock environment… Cash. Lots of it. Cisco ended its fiscal third quarter with nearly $30 billion in net cash — but it’s having a hard time spending that cash. It now spends nearly $1 billion every quarter on its dividend, and the share count has shrunk from 6.6 billion shares back in fiscal 2005 to a recent 5.2 billion. And still, the cash balance remains enormous. Those buybacks and dividends have helped Cisco’s shareholders sleep well at night, even as they’ve had to endure an extended period of shares trading in the low $20s. With the Nasdaq index steadily losing traction, having a rock-solid balance sheet is quite a virtue — and can help shares from getting sucked down into a deeper sell-off. Cisco’s not alone. I’ve come across 15… Read More

It used to be that the only way you could invest in hedge funds or private equity was if you were a multi-millionaire or a large institution. There was also the added risk of whether the manager was having an up or down year, as well as the risk of how successful the investments were. #-ad_banner-#In reality, the best investment was being the manager or the partner running the funds. The large management fees they charged ensured they always made money, regardless of their funds’ performance.  Well, now there’s a way to invest alongside — and profit from — these… Read More

It used to be that the only way you could invest in hedge funds or private equity was if you were a multi-millionaire or a large institution. There was also the added risk of whether the manager was having an up or down year, as well as the risk of how successful the investments were. #-ad_banner-#In reality, the best investment was being the manager or the partner running the funds. The large management fees they charged ensured they always made money, regardless of their funds’ performance.  Well, now there’s a way to invest alongside — and profit from — these managers. Over the past few years, several of these large managers have gone public — and that’s giving individual investors the opportunity to own shares in the management company that collects these large fees. One of the best investments in this space is Fortress Investment Group (NYSE: FIG). Founded in 1998, this business development company (BDC) manages over $62 billion in assets that are diversified across four segments. Fortress has some of the smartest guys on Wall Street working for the company, including co-founders Wesley Edens and Mike Novogratz. Fortress’ segment with the most assets under management is its traditional… Read More

Most of the time when you’re looking for stocks to add to your portfolio, ideally you’d like to earn at least double-digit returns. That kind of a return is not easy to find, especially if you want a degree of safety. This is something every investor struggles with, and it’s something I keep in mind in every issue of my premium advisory, Five-Star Stocks. At times, I need to be a bit of an opportunist. Often, that involves weeding through troves of historical data to see where today’s best opportunities — and five-star stocks — may… Read More

Most of the time when you’re looking for stocks to add to your portfolio, ideally you’d like to earn at least double-digit returns. That kind of a return is not easy to find, especially if you want a degree of safety. This is something every investor struggles with, and it’s something I keep in mind in every issue of my premium advisory, Five-Star Stocks. At times, I need to be a bit of an opportunist. Often, that involves weeding through troves of historical data to see where today’s best opportunities — and five-star stocks — may lie. #-ad_banner-#And right now, a window of opportunity is opening for a certain under-the-radar, income investment vehicle — a market phenom that I’ve seen take off, time and again, when investors become wary and the market becomes volatile. In short, I believe history is bound to repeat itself. You may remember the tech boom of the late 1990s, which ultimately led to the tech bust. In 2000 alone, the Dow lost 7% and the S&P 500 lost nearly 13%. That year, investors bailed out of speculative stocks, looking for something more stable. The investments I’m going to tell you about… Read More

I want to share an update with you. I’ll provide a couple of income ideas, but I hope more than anything that it’s something you’ll pass along to show more investors the light of a unique income investing niche. For those unaware, I’m the Chief Strategist of The Daily Paycheck. My goal is simple: Using funds from my original $200,000 real-money portfolio (yes, I invest alongside subscribers using real cash), I’m building a portfolio that delivers a dividend check for every day of the month. Imagine if you had a goose that laid a golden egg every day — that’s… Read More

I want to share an update with you. I’ll provide a couple of income ideas, but I hope more than anything that it’s something you’ll pass along to show more investors the light of a unique income investing niche. For those unaware, I’m the Chief Strategist of The Daily Paycheck. My goal is simple: Using funds from my original $200,000 real-money portfolio (yes, I invest alongside subscribers using real cash), I’m building a portfolio that delivers a dividend check for every day of the month. Imagine if you had a goose that laid a golden egg every day — that’s what I’m trying to recreate. Think of how secure you’d feel with having a dividend check every day of the week. It sounds dreamy, but I promise you — it’s closer than you realize. #-ad_banner-#In April, for example, I raked in $1,416.78 thanks to roughly 30 different dividend payments. I expect to earn a similar amount this month. I started The Daily Paycheck in December 2009. So far the results have been phenomenal. The chart below shows my monthly dividend income over the past few months… In addition to last month’s $1,416.78 in dividends, I earned $1,344.72 in… Read More