LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS & PASSIVE INCOME

This guest post comes from Kevin at 20smoney.com, a blog covering financial topics such as investing, money management and the development of income streams.

Despite the fact that most people tend to think that a market that has already booked a 60%+ rally is a great time to be invested in stocks, I tend to lean the opposite direction.  With such a massive run already in place, the risk/reward scenario is not nearly as good as it was when compared to earlier in the rally.  So, how should you play the current environment?

The sectors with some of the largest gains this year have been technology and financials.  As such, these sectors warrant extreme caution if you are currently long or are getting long any companies within these sectors.  If you want to be long the sector, but aren’t sure of specific stocks, consider mutual funds or ETFs such as Financial Select Spider (XLF) and Technology Spider (XLK).  Read more... (618 words, 8 images, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)

If you’ve been reading the popular press for the past 6 months, there’s been a slew of articles talking about deflation. I’ve been somewhat skeptical of the long term probability of deflation and have been investing in gold and commodities in anticipation of inflation. Looks like I was a little early to the game (which, on Wall Street is just the same as being wrong!).  Read more... (333 words, 9 images, estimated 1:20 mins reading time)

In the last post we saw that China was slowly diversifying away from it’s usual investments in US Treasury Bonds and investing in hard assets, natural resources and maybe other currencies.

There probably a very good reason why the world’s second largest holder of US Dollars is weaning itself away from bonds issued by the world’s largest debtor nation.  If you believe the Chinese know what they are doing, it might make sense to imitate their investment strategy.

While you don’t need to buy $80 Billion worth of gold, you might do well buying gold equal to at least 5% of your net worth. Gold is not an investment in itself but a historic store of value. Regardless what anyone tells you, the US Dollar is not a store of value. During times when governments print money hand-over-fist, gold typically does well. In fact, over the past 10 years, gold has appreciated against every single currency.  Read more... (714 words, 8 images, estimated 2:51 mins reading time)

The market has been defying gravity this summer, with the S&P500 up 49% since March. But most of the appreciation has been in what I consider lower quality stocks. Many homebuilders with doubtful prospects have doubled from their recent lows, while stocks that are somewhat recession proof like McDonalds, Walmart, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble have bounced a mere 15-20%.

According to Bloomberg, “companies with the worst earnings led the 45 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index since it fell to a 12-year low five months ago”. It might be a good time to sell some of your winners that have exceptionally well and either wait for a pull-back, or if you’re trigger happy, buy solid investment-grade companies.  Read more... (614 words, 8 images, estimated 2:27 mins reading time)

Previously I had mentioned several ways to invest for a recession or a major downturn in the US economy. In that post, I stated that one of the ways to hedge against the declining dollar (apart from my favorite method of buying gold) was investing in foreign currencies.

Several people emailed me asking how to buy foreign currencies.

A few were concerned that they would have to travel overseas and open a foreign bank account. Luckily, it isn’t so difficult. You have 3 choices.

1. Buy Currencyshares ETFs. You can choose between several currencies like Australian Dollar (Ticker: FXA), Swiss Franc (Ticker: FXF), Japanese Yen (Ticker: FXY), Euro (Ticker: FXE), etc. If you have a brokerage account, its as easy as buying stock. This is probably the easiest method. They also pay monthly dividends and are quite similar to buying a foreign currency CD.  Read more... (368 words, 8 images, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

As I mentioned 5 weeks ago when oil breached $115/barrel, demand for the black gold will cause the price to keep on rising. On Wednesday, I drove to USC where I had an interview at the Marshall School of Business for the full-time MBA program. While driving there, I heard that Oil had exceeded $133 per barrel. I had a great interview (where I spoke about my background, my interests, the state of the economy, what a moron George W. Bush is, and the current elections) and then proceeded to a friends’ place to spend the night.

I later heard that oil prices hit $135/barrel. That news was broadcast incessantly on all the news channels and I kind of felt that it was being overdone. Whenever everyones saying that the price of something is breaking all records, it usually pulls back. I think thats why the US Dollar had shown some strength this year. I woke up on Thursday and bought the ULTRASHORT OIL & GAS ETF (AMEX: DUG), it went up a dollar and I exited my position, happy to have made enough money to pay for my gasoline bill for this month.  Read more... (617 words, 8 images, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)