#yield hogs

A stock with a 4% dividend yield: I’m not saying it’s an automatic Buy for income investors (nothing ever is), especially when it involves brick-and-mortar retail. But in this continuing era of nano-yields, one has to at least look. As it turns out, I can’t warm up so easily to growth prospects, but then again, with a 4% yield, we don’t need much along these lines.

It’s been a while since I last looked at junk-bond yields so I was flabbergasted at one point last week when I checked FRED, the research arm of the Federal Reserve. The yield on the “Bank of America Merrill Lynch US High Yield Effective Yield” was down to just a tad above 6%. I get that interest rates are low. Still, there has to be some point at which we just say “No,” especially since big-name ETF providers feature such temptations as SPDR Barclays High Yield Bonds ($JNK) and iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporates ($HYG) and, hence, make it easier than ever for the average possibly unwary but definitely yield-craving investors to get up to their eyeballs in this stuff.