by Ian Wyatt, editor Daily Profit
Investors who rely on investment income often face a problem: their
dividends are paid quarterly, but their bills arrive monthly.
These three investments represent a diverse portfolio, with each holding paying monthly dividends:
Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt ETF (
PCY) is a debt investment;
Nuveen Quality Preferred Income Fund II (
JPS), a debt-equity investment; and
Prospect Capital Corporation (
PSEC), an equity investment.
Anyone seeking income knows to by-pass U.S government debt, thanks to
the Federal Reserve ringing all yield out of these securities.
Fortunately,
many other countries' central banks refuse to follow the Fed's lead.
PowerShares Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt ETF specializes in investing
in this higher-yield sovereign-debt market.
Specifically, PowerShares invests in U.S. dollar-denominated government bonds issued by 22 emerging-market countries.
Top
holdings include debt issued by the governments of Romania, Pakistan,
South Korea, and Vietnam. That said, no one country accounts for more
than 5% of the fund's portfolio value.
You might think a
portfolio composed of emerging-market debt would be volatile. That's not
the case: PowerShares' beta is only 0.44, which means its share price
tends to move only 44% as much as the overall stock market.
Over
the past two years, PowerShares' share price has traded mostly within a
two-dollar band. Over the past year, that share price has trended
mostly higher, but it still provides an income stream that yields 5%,
and of course, that income is distributed monthly.
There is another debt-like investment that investors should consider,
and that's preferred stocks. I say debt-like because preferred stocks
are hybrid securities; that is, they have characteristics of both stocks
and bonds.
Preferred stocks are like common stocks in that dividends are paid and shares trade like any shares on the major exchanges.
Preferred
stocks are like bonds in that they are issued with a coupon payment
based on par value. In other words, you know what payment to expect.
There is no wondering if the payout will change. The payout on
preferred stock is contractual.
Nuveen Quality Preferred Income Fund II, a closed-end fund, is one of my favorite preferred-stock investments.
I
like this fund because of low management fees and broad diversification
in highly rated preferred stocks. Its $1.5 billion portfolio is spread
over 212 issues, 90% of which are rated BBB or higher.
Through
the judicial use of leverage - around 28% of its portfolio - Nuveen is
also able to "leverage up" its distribution. That means Nuveen offers a
distribution yield that is a full percentage point over most individual
preferred stocks.
Nuveen's "leveraged up" portfolio currently
produces a 7.6% yield. What' more, that income is distributed monthly,
unlike the quarterly distributions of most preferred stocks.
Business
development corporations (BDCs), financing firms that lend to
middle-market companies, are another rich vein of income.
BDCs
are organized as partnerships, so by law they must return at least 90%
of their taxable income to shareholders. Most BDCs thus have yields in
the 8%-to-11% range.
Most BDCs also distribute income quarterly
instead of monthly. Prospect Capital is the exception; it distributes
cash monthly. What's more, its distribution produces a 10.7% annualized
yield - one on the high end of the BDC scale.
Prospect
should continue to remain a high-yield investment; it generally raises
its payout every three to four months. I expect that trend to continue.
Prospect's diversified investment portfolio is spread among 78 long-term investments with a fair value of $1.69 billion.
I
like that 56% of Prospect's loan portfolio is in a first-lien position;
that means Prospect owns a high claim on its debtors' assets should the
business go south (though that rarely occurs). That suggests to me that
the 10.7% yield is safe.
Overall, with these three investments,
income investors not only get a portfolio of high-yield monthly income
distributors, they get a diversified source of monthly income
distributors.