Quality High Yield Dividend ETF's and Stocks

How To Invest In Dividend Stocks For High Yield

With high inflation the search for yield protecting from inflation becomes more challenging. Everyone knows about bonds but I'd like to dive into some vehicles I believe have a good shot to beat the risk free rate.

Marc Lichtenfeld's book Get Rich with Dividends: A Proven System for Earning Double-Digit Returns really opened my eyes to the possible returns from the right dividend stocks. I had read of famous portfolio manager Peter Lynch's study on an all stock retirement portfolio beating any bond portfolio. I was just naturally inclined to view equities as riskier than bonds though.

I now conceptualize a diversified equity portfolio as equal or superior to bonds. Not that there is never a place for bonds but with smart stock selection I think there is edge in dividend stocks. I am going to touch on some interesting dividend ETF's and a stock with a stable history of dividends. I like to invest for quality and above average yield and steady returns.

The first high yield ETF we will look at also has the highest yield at a 19% dividend yield paid monthly. Cornerstone Strategic Value Fund (CLM) is a $1.6 billion closed end fund started in 1987 with diversified assets. By diversified I mean everything practically. From large-cap tech, healthcare, energy, MLP's, foreign equity, and other ETFs. Ten year total returns have been pretty much on par with the S&P 500 index. It underperformed the S&P by about 1%. CLM's management was smart to be overweight tech going into 2023.

Highland Global Allocation Fund (HGLB) is the next ETF with an 11% dividend yield payed monthly. 10 year returns were 5.3%. It is a discretionary fund designed to have low correlation to the U.S. equity market and they have done well with that objective. It holds an unconventional portfolio of equities and debt. One of it's largest holdings is communications company TerreStar Corp. via their stock and debt. They also have a variety of REIT's, MLP's, energy warrants, utilities, sovereign debt and preferred stock.

High Income Securities Fund (PCF) has a long track record having started in 1987 and sports an 11% dividend yield paid monthly. The share price has had very low volatility since it started and 10 year returns at 5%. It primarily invests in discounted closed end funds. It holds an extrememly diversified portfolio with 57% of assets in funds, 20% in preferred stocks and 16% in business develpment companies. It holds a whopping total of 45 closed end funds from global equity to corporate bonds. It also holds some RETI's and a steel company preferred Steel Partners. It has some minor allocattion in other sectors. Though the long-term returns are nothing overly impressive I like the share price stability over the years and consistent dividend.

Ternium S.A. (TX) is an $8 billion steel company that sells steel in many Latin American countries and the U.S. It has a 7% dividend yield and the stock has returned 13% over the last 10 years. Free cash flow has been stable and has even grown since 2019. Total shares outstanding has been unchanged at 1.9 million over the last 4 years. They have payed dividends since the 1990s and increased the dividend since the late 90s.

I believe these ideas can provide some high grade unconventional diversification to an income portfolio. I also highly recommend the Lichtenfeld for learning how to invest in high yield dividend stocks.

Gold and Miners Poised To Make a Big Run

Throughout history there have been many years and even decades when gold outperformed equities. The question I am going to ask is "is this time different?" I am particularly interested at looking at the 1970's when the U.S. had high inflation and low economic growth. The FED is tightening yet many economic indicators are slow to point to a full-blown recession. Inflation has been hard to tame for Jerome Powell thus far. Stagflation is a probable outcome in this economic scenario. There is also the increasing potential for geopolitical events as it relates to oil as there is tension between eastern and western nations.

So far, many parts of the economy have been unprecedently resilient to higher rates. Housing has been one of them as many people are buying from fear of missing out and moving to cheaper cities. The second period in history that saw gold outperfrom equities was 2000 to 2012. This was following a long secular expansion and tech bubble collapse. We now are at the end of a long expansion and crypto and Bitcoin bubble burst.

Gold also did well following the 2008 banking panic but I am particularly interested in the years when gold rose as stocks fell. These are the years in the 1970s and 2001 to 2003. So, I see a couple likely scenarios economically. The FED tightening causes a recession that is mild or severe. If it is mild I see a possibility of inflation sticking around like the 70s. If it is severe and there are major bank panics it will likely be resolved quickly as 1907 was with J.P. Morgan helping bail out Trust Company of America and the 2008 panic were. In 2008 much of the deflation came in less than one year as housing collapsed and banking products failed. The Government in 2008 was fairly quick to inject capital and launch QE in 2009. Gold benefited from that.

In 2009 I predicted the pivot point on gold and was bullish right before its historic run. I said, "This chart sends a powerful signal. It is saying that it is more than likely that gold the commodity will continue higher. Let me rephrase that. Very likely." I had noticed a triangle formation on the gold chart.



What Can We Learn From The Past?

Let's switch gears and go back to the 1970's. It was a period of much uncertainty politically and economically. The highlighted regions show two periods where stocks fell and gold rose. Even the entire decade had stocks losing to gold. Gold traded for $35 in 1971 and went to over $850 returning 2,300% in ten years.

Next let us view the 2001 recession and gold and stocks. We see yet again periods when gold rose as equity indices fell in 2001 to 2003. This was during the recession of 2001 when unemployment rose from 4% to 5.5%. Then Fed Chair Alan Greenspan kept interest rates historically low during his tenure.

Here is a longer-term chart of equities and gold.

The gold market is now signaling extreme strength as the daily chart is showing a very powerful consolidation pattern. It is a bullish triangle formation as you can see below. Gold miners are alreading breaking higher from this consolidation like Franco-Nevada (FNV). I am currently long the gold ETF GDX calls. Other liquid ETFs include VanEck Junior Gold Miners ETF GDXJ and SPDR Gold Trust GLD. GLD doesn't hold physcial reserves though. Sprott Physical Gold Trust PHYS is a gold etf that holds actual gold.

Final Thoughts

Everyone is scrambling to find cheap gold mining stocks. As gold is consolidating at levels near last years highs I see a good possiblity of different scenarios. Over many recent years gold has been a "risk on" trade. Meaning it usually will only rise when stocks and other assets do. There were a couple days during the most recent banking troubles, however, where gold and Bitcoin had positive days while equities fell. Currently, gold is surpassing Bitcoin in this potential "flight to safety."

I see it rising as it did in 2001 and 2009 if the FED ends up reacting to a recession with QE like 2009 or with another extreme loosening like in 2001. The odds are stacked that we are going to get a recession with historic FED tightening and yield curve inversion. The other scenario is a recession with elements of inflation sticking like the 1970 and even a weak U.S. Dollar.

Whether one sees it as a stagflationary safehaven or an inflation hedge on a declining stock market. I see gold as a historically wise investment vehicle at this time and for many years to come as we sort out this economic cycle. It may start making new highs very soon or it may take months before the momentum starts but I see gold moving higher over the next year. Increasing allocation to gold just makes sense.

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Full disclosure: I am long GDX call options currently and may take positions in stocks mentioned. I have no physcial gold holidings. I have approx. two dozen silver coins.

charts courtesy bullionvault.co.uk and stockcharts.com

Two Interesting Deep Values

Here we go with the two deep values! I recently ran a screen looking for a particular kind of deep value stock. I was looking for either sub net tangible asset value or net current asset value. I screened out Chinese, semi’s, and biotech as these in my opinion tend to be less reliable as investments in the micro and small-cap space.

One of the more interesting I found was Crimson Wine Group, Ltd. (CWGL). I’ve rarely seen beverage companies below net tangible or NCAV before. A couple good ones that come to mind from years ago were Caribou Coffee and Coffee Holding when they were briefly below net tangible asset value. Caribou Coffee was bought by private equity after I wrote about it. I’ve never seen a wine company near deep value level.

Crimson Wine is currently trading for 59% of net tangible asset value. It is a wine wholesaler and direct to customer. From the most recent SEC EDGAR filings we have net tangible asset value of $221.4 million and market cap of just $133 million. Net current asset value is not far away at $72 million. They haven’t diluted with any recent offerings the past couple years as shares outstanding has been stable and slightly down. Cash has been stable on the balance sheet also. Cash is slightly up over the past couple years.

The company has had a slightly profitable quarter in the last year. The share price has been up and down. The stock had a good run from fall of 2020 to summer 2021 and has been down since. I always like to see a stock price that has had some kind of history of share price appreciation. So many small and micro-cap companies never have any history of stock appreciation so it is always nice to see the market can indeed react to positive performance. The company had positive free cash flow for the trailing 12 months ending Q3 last year of $8 million.

The second stock is Save Foods, Inc. (SVFD). It develops and sells eco-friendly green treatments for the food industry to enhance food safety and shelf life of fresh produce. This one is a small micro-cap with a market cap of $5.3 million. Net current asset value is $6.63 million. They grew revenue a whopping 88% from 2020 to 2021 although there is not an annual net profit in the last three years. Cash has been stable the last three years, however, shares outstanding has been diluted. From the second to third quarter of 2022 share count went from 2.8 million to 4.5 million.

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Disclosure: I currently have no position in either of these stocks.

Starting a Substack For Net Current Asset and Deep Value Stocks

I am starting a substack for strictly stock analysis of deep value net-net's and net tangible asset stocks. Here is my Substack. Here are a couple of the most recent deep values I came across from my screening. This is the first round of interesting sub NCAV or net tangible asset value stocks. Screen excludes Chinese, semis, biotech. In millions. These figures and for the ones going forward I will be getting the most recent numbers via the SEC.gov Edgar search database.

CWGL $221.4 NTAV, $72 NCAV with $133 market cap

SVFD $6.63 NCAV $5.3 market cap

AOUT $105.4 NCAV 115.5 NTAV $124 market cap

Market Direction

I'm watching the major indices very closely day to day. Fundamentally the economy is resiliant in the face of FED rate moves not seen in decades. History shows that when the yield curve is inverted as long as it is there is a recession. I believe we had a recession in Q1 and Q2 of last year as GDP went negative two quarters in a row. That is the time tested measure of a recession. The definition of a recession was tinkered with but to me we had a mild recession thus signaling the effect of the rate hikes.

I think many bears are ignoring that possiblity that the recovery was quick and rates were not high enough to bring a double dip recession. I don't know if we will get another this year but it seems it is going to take much higher rates to bring it about. The Covid stimulis and FED action was massive and it appears underated. It is very likely PE multiples are now high as they were in 2009 also because the market is forward looking. It very well could be that growth will continue even with rates at current levels.

One thing is for sure the economy is different now with secular labor and supply chain issues. Work from home is still common with many companies. Maybe all this has something to do with why the economy keeps spurting along. Housing has been resilent too with rates high. The bear thesis doesn't make sense if employment is still low and the housing market ok.

Technically, the market is uptrending currently and many support levels were found on the October low last year. I'm leaning more to major US indices going higher the next month or two but we shall see.

Coffee Holding JVA Stock Update A Net-Net

I've covered JVA on the blog for many years and shared my honest thoughts on the company. It's been so beaten down in this bear market it is now at .62% of net current asset value. In the past it would bottom out around net tangible asset value. This is one of those rarer cases where a profitable or recently former profitable company becomes a net current asset value stock.

If you are new to deep value the net current asset stocks get their attention because of famous investor Ben Graham who taught Warren Buffett. Net current asset value is a rought liquidation value of the whole company. Of course the true liquidatoin value is usually lower given the inventory and equipment and long-term assets are likely going to fetch less than on the books. They are usually priced so cheap for a reason too.

JVA is now merging with another company. Here is a piece of the SEC filing.

As a condition to the Merger, Pubco shall also acquire all of the issued and outstanding Delta securities from the Sellers in exchange for Pubco Ordinary Shares (the “Exchange” and, collectively with the Merger and the other transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement, the “Transactions”).

As a result of Transactions, JVA and Delta will each become direct, wholly-owned subsidiaries of Pubco, with JVA stockholders receiving approximately $31.5 million (or 4.79%) worth of Pubco Ordinary Shares (the “Merger Consideration”) and Delta stockholders receiving approximately $625 million (or 95.21%) worth of Pubco Ordinary Shares (the “Exchange Consideration” and collectively with the Merger Consideration, the “Business Combination Consideration”), subject to certain adjustments, at an implied diluted value per share of $5.50.

The Business Combination Consideration may be adjusted if Delta closes certain acquisitions prior to the closing of the Transactions. The Merger Agreement also includes an earn-out to existing stockholders of Delta, consisting of $50 million of additional Pubco Ordinary Shares, which will be released to Delta stockholders if and when Delta achieves $70 million or greater of net income for fiscal year ending 2023. The company they are merging with is private so I don't know anything about them.

Disclosure: I have a position in JVA

Net Current Asset Stocks

As the market continues to be weak I am going to start looking for cheap stocks below net current asset value and net tangible asset value. I just ran a strict scan looking for super discounted assets. This is the first scan I have done in awhile for these as I never thought it would produce much in the most recent bull market. This scan is cherry picked from criteria of price-to-book value of .5 or less, long-term debt to equity less than .3 and return on equity over 1.

The most interesting ones are Vaccitech plc (VACC) with NCAV of $187 million and a market cap of $89 mil. VACC has postive earnings this year with $.22 last quarter and $.42 the quarter before that. Cash has been pretty stable the past year and currently it has $200 mil in cash.

We also have TD Holdings, Inc. (GLG) with $154 mil in NCAV and a market cap of $59 mil. Not as much cash as VACC as the large majority of the current assets are in account receivables. They had a couple recent slightly positive quarters of $.02 earnings per share and $.05. The stock has tried to bottom and has been sideways for months with support around $1.00 a share.

Stock Market Top Bull Trap Set

You may remember my blog post from late October where I outlined the scenario of a stock market bottom. I gave the exact levels it would need to break through to confirm and had a good read on the price action down there. The very bottom came on CPI day in October. It was also a bear trap. A bear trap is where the price action begins to go lower enticing sellers and short sellers to sell. What happens though is the momentum quickly shifts back to bullish as price fails to continue to go lower. We saw an epic bear trap on that October day. It was one of the largest reversals from a 52 week low in history.

You may or may not have noticed that on CPI day this week the market shot up early but fell after the CPI news. It was another trap!! And on CPI day again! Maybe it's a big coincidence or the CPI and inflation expectations are the main driver of equities during this time. Inflation is one of the biggest economic factors affecting consumers and businesses these days and not to mention the FED's decisions. We can see the two CPI days in this chart and how it is breaking the uptrend line. It tried to reclaim trend support on the CPI day which was yesterday and that is when we got the big failed signal. Failed signals are powerfull. It will take something special to continue higher from here. I'm not yet fully committed to this being the top but if we see a break of the yellow line around 389.50 on SPY it's game on for more lows.

We've got some obvious rounding top formation going on in small-caps.

I-Robot IRBT Merger Arbitrage

As it still stands I-Robot (IRBT) is being acquired by Amazon (AMZN) for $61 per share in an all cash deal. The announcement was back in early August of this year. I-Robot stockholders have officially approved the merger with Amazon.

To analyze the opportunity here let's begin with the deal itself. All cash deals always have a higher likelyhood of going through and this one is approved by shareholders. So we have one checkbox marked off. Next is the spread worth it? With IRBT stock currently at $52.57 a share and the deal price being $61 we currently have a whopping 16% return. The next hurdle is the possiblity of regulatory action denying the merger. There is a lot of speculation this deal won't make it past regulatory approval. I remember when there was a lot of speculation on the Fitbit merger being blocked as well and it ended up going through anyway.

I think it is worth averaging into IRBT stock in small increments over coming weeks. The stock is down a lot and could just rise with the overall market even it doesn't get bought. So, I see the risk/reward being nice here. Artificial intelligence is forecast to be one the fastest growing markets over coming years. With the likelyhood of significant innovation IRBT will no doubt be a great company going forward.

Stock Market Rally Continues

Since my recent posts about the market rally the major indices have held a steady uptrend. What I am seeing now is bonds especially in the ETF HYG actually "leading" equities higher. This happens from time to time in history. TLT and government bonds are leading too. I've been on Twitter a good bit and I am surprised more people are not paying attention to this. You heard it here. The bull momentum in many sectors is strong escpecially pivotal sectors like homebuilding and construction. This is seen in ETF's VNQ XHB.

I now see stocks continuing to move higher after the economic data is currently being shrugged off. A slow grind higher seems to be in the works. Even QQQ is acting bullish. I always stay open-minded and seperate fundamentals from trend when need be as we are seeing now. I learned in 2009 often major bottoms begin and continue on bad economic data and bad corporate news. Fighting an uptrend is futile. The market is always forward looking. Here are some charts to add a little clarity to the bullish sentiment.