Special Report: Profit and Protect–What you need to know about stock market stages for 2021–Updated Part 1 and 2 of 3 with my 10 picks to buy now, my first 4 sells, and my first 2 hedges

Special Report: Profit and Protect–What you need to know about stock market stages for 2021–Updated Part 1 and 2 of 3 with my 10 picks to buy now, my first 4 sells, and my first 2 hedges

2021 is shaping up as an especially challenging year for investors. Much, much more challenging than 2020. I don’t think we can count on this rally running uninterrupted through the year. That would be simple, wouldn’t it? We’d all know how to profit from that scenario. And I don’t think the market is about to drop off a cliff from its current record highs. That would be traumatic. But, still, we do know how to protect a portfolio in that scenario. And even how to profit from a prolonged plunge–if we can bring ourselves to place those short and Put Options bets. Instead 2021 is likely to be one of those years with a Rally Stage and then a correction (or “something”) to be followed by a last quarter of 2021 that is, at this moment, close to completely unpredictable. That would make 2021 one of those years that gives investors a chance to be wrong several times over, to botch timing on the upside and the downside, and to let emotions power some really bad investment moves. I don’t pretend that I’ve got this year’s market stages down perfectly–although I think the outlines for the first two stages for 2021 are pretty clear. I don’t imagine that I’ve got the timing for navigating these stages clocked perfectly–although I do think I understand “generally” when the market is likely to switch gears. And that lets me lay out for you a likely pattern for 2021 and to suggest stocks and ETFs to use to navigate this year. Part of the point in getting as specific as I can at this point isn’t that I expect that I’ve got everything right, but to lay out concrete markers that will let you and me adjust portfolios as the year progresses. I’m dividing this Special Report into three parts.

2020 was a great year for Dividend investing: my Dividend Portfolio showed a total return of 15.71% for 2020

2020 was a great year for Dividend investing: my Dividend Portfolio showed a total return of 15.71% for 2020

It’s unusual, to say the least, to have a dividend portfolio match the returns on the Standard & Poor’s 500–especially in a year when the S&P 500 was setting an all time high–but that’s what happened in 2020. My Dividend Portfolio showed a price gain of 12.28% for 2020. Add in the 3.43% dividend yield and the total return for the portfolio for the year was 15.71.%  For the year the S&P 500 returned 16% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average returned 7%.

AES utility-scale battery joint venture gets outside investment to push valuation to $1 billion

Nothing like a little $125 million investment from an outside party to validate a joint venture. Fluence, a global battery storage joint venture of Siemens (SIEGY) and AES (AES), has reached an agreement with the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar for a $125 million investment. The funding will give the Qatar Investment Authority a 12% stake in Fluence and values the battery company at more than $1 billion.

Buying Dow tomorrow in my Dividend Portfolio, Pick #8 in my Special Report “10 Dividend Stocks that are beating the risky rockets”

Dow (DOW) certainly fits the dividend template that I’ve explained in my Special Report: “10 Dividend Stocks that are beating the risky rockets. The stock yields 5.26% after a 0.20% gain today December 9. That compares to a yield of just 2.8% in July 2017 and 3.1% in December 2016. The stock also shows a 1.06% price to sales ratio on today. I think we’re looking at a cheap stock. Tomorrow I’l be adding it to my Dividend Portfolio.

The returns for 2018 and 2019 for my Dividend Portfolio show the challenge facing dividend income investors during this period of extremely low interest rates.

The returns for 2018 and 2019 for my Dividend Portfolio show the challenge facing dividend income investors during this period of extremely low interest rates.

In 2018 my Dividend Portfolio showed a yield on 3.60%. That produced $6,483 in dividend income that year. The goal of this portfolio is to beat the yield on the 10-year Treasury. On January 1, 2018 the yield on the 10-year Treasury was 2.58%. In 2019 my Dividend Portfolio showed a yield of 4.90%

November 6: Economy adds 638,000 jobs in October

November 6: Economy adds 638,000 jobs in October

The U.S. economy added 638,000 jobs in October, a slight drop from September, when the economy added 672,000 jobs.

The job gains were enough to push the official unemployment rate down to 6.9% from 7.9% in September.

The U-6 unemployment rate, which unlike the official rate includes discouraged workers who have stopped looking for work and workers in part-time jobs who would like full-time work fell to 12.1% from September’s 12.8%.

And this month’s drop in the unemployment rate wasn’t driven by workers leaving the workforce.The labor participation rate rose 0.3 percentage points to 61.7%, still a low rate on historical standards.

So why didn’t the market move up and strongly on the news?