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These are our most recent articles. Also see which stocks have been this week’s best and worst performers.
Higher Interest Rates Impact Utilities: What Dividend Investors Need to Know
Higher interest rates create a number of risks and opportunities for investors in the utility sector. Utilities have long been a staple for low risk income investors, such as those that live off dividends during retirement. That’s because most utilities have long track records of highly secure and slowly growing dividends, thanks to their stable cash flows. In fact, some utilities are even dividend aristocrats and dividend kings, meaning they have raised their dividends every year for 25 and 50 consecutive years, respectively. In the past decade, however, record low interest rates have acted as a real growth tailwind, helping these stable electric, water, and gas companies borrow at ultralow interest rates. In addition, yield-starved [...]
Higher Interest Rates Impact MLPs: What Dividend Investors Need to Know
Higher interest rates have a number of implications for investors in master limited partnerships (MLPs). Record low interest rates over the last decade have created major challenges for income investors, who through 2007 had enjoyed generous yields on risk-free investments such as savings accounts, money market funds, CDs, and U.S. Treasury bonds. Today, many of those assets offer paltry or even negative interest rates, helping explain why MLPs have become increasingly popular during this time of low interest rates. These (generally) energy-focused infrastructure stocks are structured in such a way as to pay generous and often growing yields. Thus they have become a major staple in many investors’ dividend retirement portfolios. However, thanks to the [...]
Higher Interest Rates Impact REITs: What Dividend Investors Need to Know
Many dividend investors wonder how higher interest rates will impact REITs, and for good reason. Over the past few years, interest rates have fallen to their lowest levels in recorded history. This has created a challenging environment for income investors who previously enjoyed healthy, low-risk returns from money market funds, CDs, and Treasury bonds. In fact, since the darkest days of the financial crisis, many yield-starved investors have been forced to search elsewhere for their income needs, including bond alternatives such as real estate investment trusts (REITs). As a result, the entire real estate industry outperformed the market even during one of the longest and strongest bull markets in history. Since March 2009, the Vanguard [...]
General Mills (GIS): A Safe Dividend Stock Down 15% Since July
General Mills (GIS) is a blue chip stock that has paid uninterrupted dividends for 117 years. The company’s dividend has increased each year since 2004 and boasts a 10.4% annual growth rate over the last decade. Despite General Mills’ impressive history, the company’s stock price is down more than 15% since early July 2016 while the S&P 500 Index has gained over 13%. With investors’ expectations reduced and the stock’s 3.2% dividend yield sitting above its five-year average yield, now is a good time to review why General Mills remains a core holding in our Conservative Retirees dividend portfolio. Business Overview General Mills went into business in 1866, owning just a single flour mill at the [...]