An income investor has several investments available to create income streams. Most turn to dividend stocks and bonds to create consistent cash flows for their living expenses. While both of these investments will provide income, there are additional vehicles to produce money flows. One I like to use is closed-end funds or CEFs. These investments trade like stocks with a market price and can be easily purchased during trading hours on all stock exchanges.
Investors have nearly 400 CEFs to choose from that pay monthly distributions (see listing included). Simply, an investor can create a diversified portfolio of CEFs to create monthly income. Most investors should look at selecting five or more CEFs in different investment categories or type of objective. There are cases with investors creating numerous CEFs such as 30 funds to average one paycheck per day. I guess you can call this one check per day or daily paychecks.
The 10-year Treasury note touched its second-lowest yield before regaining some ground to finish at around 1.51%. The 30-year Treasury was offering a yield of 2.234% last week. Those meager yields mean that despite grousing about elevated stock valuations and poor corporate quarterly results, investors aren’t finding a lot of safe options to put their money and eke out a decent return. Bespoke statisticians say 41% of stocks on the S&P 500 offer a richer yield than the so-called long bond, or 30-year note. And more than 60% pay a better yield than the benchmark 10-year note. A great alternative is investing in CEFs.
CEFs have some differences compared to stocks such as they have a publically known net asset value or NAV. The NAV is the sum value of the funds holding or intrinsic value. The CEF may trade at a market value that us different than the NAV. This makes it easy for investors to determine if the fund is trading at a premium or discount to its true value or NAV. As an investor, you want to purchase CEFs at a discount to NAV as this can be like buying a $1 of assets for $0.90 or whatever the discount to NAV. Who doesn’t want to buy funds at a discounted price or on sale!
To create a successful CEF portfolio, an investor should create a diversified portfolio of monthly paying CEFs trading at a discount to NAV. The investor can reinvest some dividends to increase their payments over time. This investing strategy can be used to replace income from employment or to supplement other types of income.
The Western Asset Emerging Markets Debt Fund (ESD) is a closed-end fund that invests in bonds issued by emerging-market governments and corporations. As income investors, we love the 8.5% yield… And as value investors, we love that the fund is available for an 13% discount to its NAV. On top of that, bonds are traditionally safer investments than stocks, even in emerging markets. ESD has an extremely diverse portfolio of 235 different holdings. Its largest country allocation, Mexico, only accounts for 13% of its portfolio. And 97% of its holdings are denominated in U.S. dollars.
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