The Market Lost 5% Last Quarter – But You Didn’t Have To

Photo by Nick Chong on Unsplash

As we tally up our investment results for the first quarter of 2022, this headline from Bloomberg sums up what happened to many investors:

This doesn’t have to be true for you as an individual investor, but first, let’s see how the major market averages did for the quarter.

• Dow Jones: -4.5%
• Nasdaq: -9.08%
• Russell 2000: -7.8%
• S&P 500: -4.95%

Bond investments didn’t do any better: the largest bond ETF, the iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG), lost 5.4% for the quarter.

You can see how Bloomberg came up with the headline. However, there were (and are) investment strategies that consistently beat the major indexes and the traditional 60/40 stocks and bonds portfolio approach.

I show people several of them. Here are the results from my three income-focused services for the quarter…

With my Dividend Hunter service, I show people a range of low-risk, high-yield investments. I divide the list into three categories:

• Stable Dividend Investments posted an 8.2% total return for the quarter, and the current average yield is 7.4%.
• Variable Dividend Investments were up (total return) by 5.6%, and the current average yield is 9.4%.
• Preferred Stock Investments, like bond prices, lost 5.6%; however, the group currently yields 8%.

I am confident that preferred stocks will recover, and I have urged my subscribers to pick up some of these stable dividend payers while the shares are “on sale.”