The Best Of 2024: Dividend Stocks, A National Emergency On Prices And Nvidia

Next week, The Juice looks at two HUGE European tech startups, including one preparing to go public in the United States soon, to highlight the importance of increasing individual investor access to venture capital. 

As we have explained in our recent installments on alternative investing, the playing field has never been more level. However, it’s still nowhere near even. The most prolific private company investments still remain available only to the ultra-wealthy unless you win your brokerage’s IPO lottery. And, even then, you’re not able to get in on the true ground floor. We’ll expand on this all next week in The Juice. 

So make sure to prioritize our email in your inbox, then forward it to a friend, letting them know they can subscribe to The Juice for free. 

But, today, because we’re in the closing days of 2024, let’s go back and look at five of the most popular Juice installments of the year. Each one teaches a little lesson or offers the most relevant info from 2024 that brings us to the point where we are today. On the cusp of 2025, when we will take our coverage of alts to the next level by showing you how to blend them with traditional investments. 

#1: Dividend Stocks: Key Basics You Need To Know

Among the most-read Juices are the ones where we cover investing basics. But not solely for novices. When we cover the bases, we make sure the installment also functions as a reminder and a way to take the discussion to a point that advances the conversation and can be relevant for all levels of investors. 

For example, in this Juice we hit the key ins and outs of dividend stocks, but closed with a point we expanded on throughout the rest of 2024:

Like so much else in today’s world, dividend investing has taken on a life of its own, complete with people who swear by it as the end all and be all and those who think it’s the worst strategy ever. As with most things in this polarized world, the truth sits somewhere in the middle.

Such an important point. While — absolutely — The Juice thinks you should own alternative investments, including some of the ones we have been discussing in recent weeks, this doesn’t mean you abandon more traditional approaches, such as simply buying, holding and reinvesting in dividend stocks. Portfolio diversification is about more than investment type and asset allocation. It’s about a blend of worthy strategies that ultimately work in concert with one another.

#2: Dividend Stocks In Retirement: The Biggest Lie?

Right on the heels of the dividend stock refresher, we dug deeper in a Juice that resonated with readers. 

Polarization, man. You can’t escape it. 

If you follow the retail investing world like we do, you know that there are a ton of people who swear by dividend stocks. They’re building their empires with them. One day, they plan to sit on the beach — a pina colada in one hand, daiquiri in the other — doing nothing but living large off of their recurring dividend income. 

We wonder if these folks have ever run the math. Because, while it’s not impossible to retire on the back of dividend income, it’s super hard to do. We’ll run the math in a minute.

And we ran the math, using what is — don’t forget — an early 2024 example so, while the math might be outdated, the message absolutely is not. 

So, you need to own $388,800 worth of VZ to make $26,788 a year in dividend income. Of course, there are factors that can impact this question in one moment and over time, but these are things we’ll consider on another day. But — all else equal — it takes a ton of capital to earn enough dividend income to live off of. 

It would probably be difficult for most people to live off of $26,788 a year. And, mind you, VZ pays a pretty high yield. 

So, while you can generate enough dividend income to live off of — all or in part — it takes time and money. And, unless you were born on third base, it takes significant amounts of both. And, if you have really significant amounts of both, you might not want to mess with this strategy in the first place. 

This strategy is one we love, but it’s not a panacea. It needs to be put in quantitative perspective more often than it is.

All to say, dividend growth investing isn’t a strategy to use in isolation. However, it probably should be an integral part of a diversified investment strategy. 

#3: It Should Be A National Emergency

Our housing installments always resonate with readers. We wrote this popular one in April. And — eight months later — not a damn thing has changed. 

Don’t believe anybody who tells you prices are coming down. Maybe so in some markets, but not enough matter locally and certainly not at all nationwide. We’re at a point in time when housing is literally a hair away from being as unaffordable as ever.

And it is. At the moment, you need to make more than $105,000 to be able to afford the $2,635 monthly payment on the median-priced home in America. On a $750,000 pad, the income required rises to just over $180,000 annually. 

No wonder why when we talk about housing, people listen. Because things keep getting worse and nobody seems to be doing anything of substance about it. And, make no mistake, even if you’re not directly affected, housing likely impacts somebody you know and love. 

#4: What Do Groceries And Dining Out Cost Where You Live?

A hugely popular Juice because cost of living and inflation impacted pretty much every one of us. Or, at least, we all noticed the high prices. And, now, we notice that, even though inflation is apparently down, prices at the grocery store and in restaurants sure aren’t. 

In that Juice, we kept track and found that, for one week, we spent just under $200 doing some modest grocery shopping for two people in Los Angeles. If anything, the same purchases cost more today than they did when we wrote that installment in May. 

What do things look like on the ground where you are?

#5: Nvidia Surpasses 1,000,000 Pageviews In Trackstar

Readers love our Trackstar database. In this Juice, we explained how we use data on the tickers investors search for most across the platforms of our 100+ financial media partners to write our newsletters and generate ideas. 

When Nvidia (NVDA) passed an unprecedented 1 million views, we said:

There might not be a better example of buy on weakness. Of buy when other people are afraid. When other people are questioning the future of artificial intelligence or NVDA’s growth prospects in the space. 

Despite some scary drops here and there over the course of the year, NVDA is up roughly 166% YTD and around 200% over the last year.

Since we wrote that Juice in July, NVDA is up about 8%. 

However, we stressed buy on weakness. If you, for example, snag NVDA when it crashed around $99 in August, those cheap shares represent roughly 39% in profits. 

So, The Juice says keep buying NVDA. 

The Bottom Line: 2024 has been a wild year. And it’s not over yet. We sandwiched the bad news from the best of 2024 in the middle. Between two pieces of good news. 

One, if you’re a long-term investor, you should ignore the noise and keep your eye on the ball. There’s no better way to do this than to set it and forget it on dividend stocks. 

Two, while you’re at it, keep regularly buying low-cost, broad-market index funds and market leaders, such as NVDA. The Juice thinks both have room to run. 

If you’re lucky enough to have money to invest, doing these things is one of the best ways to beat inflation and build as secure a financial future as possible. 

Another way is to get appropriately aggressive and further diversify. Stick with The Juice as we continue to detail exactly how to do this using alternative investments in conjunction with your more traditional holdings and approaches.

• Is Alt Even Alt Anymore?
• Unlock Daily Stock Gems – FinPro Secrets Spilled!
• Are Alternative Investment Options Only For ‘Professional’ Investors?
• Check Out The Juice’s Favorite ETF Screen