I really hope you didn’t follow the flawed “sell in May and
go away” strategy I warned you about last month. Because if you dumped all
your stocks on, say, May 1, you’ve already missed out on a 1.5% rise in the
S&P 500.
That may not sound like a lot, but that period saw some nice
gains from recommendations I gave you earlier this spring, like Apple AAPL -0.92% (AAPL),
one of my top picks for a retirement portfolio, which jumped 6.5%; Allied World
Assurance (AWH), up 4.2%; and senior care provider Ventas VTR -0.76%,
Inc. (VTR), up 6.8%.
I still like all three companies, particularly Allied World,
which still trades at just 94% of book value.
The problem? With S&P 500 trading at an overstretched 24
times trailing-twelve-month earnings, deals like these are getting tougher to
come by, at least here in the U.S. But luckily for us, there are still plenty
of attractively priced dividend growers beyond our borders.
What’s more, international companies boast dividend yields
that crush those of their American cousins. According to Nuveen Investments,
the MSCI MSCI +% EAFE
Index, which includes large- and mid-cap stocks from 21 developed nations
outside North America, has delivered yields 50% higher, on average, than the
S&P 500 over the past decade.
Continue to read at Forbes…
