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.”