Tap Bitcoin(CURRENCY:BTC) Without Buying Bitcoin

In the middle of March, I told readers that the “tech bull keeps running,” thanks to growing earnings that were likely to continue. So far, tech profits are up 31.8% from a year ago. Only two sectors have beaten tech: energy and materials, which is a result of rising commodity prices. No other sector-not even financials, which are getting a huge boost from the Fed’s interest rate hikes-comes close.
But there’s one crazy thing about this earnings surge-the stock market is very slow to price this good news back in. Take, for instance, Facebook, whose earnings were way ahead of forecasts and up a whopping 62.5% from the prior year. Yet the stock is still down 1.5% from the start of 2018, driving its P/E ratio down to 25.5. It was 34 a year ago.
Sure, much of that has to do with the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, but you can spot this trend across tech, despite its absurdly high profits. This means if you aren’t into tech, you still have time to get in. But what’s the best way to grab some upside (and income) here, Of course, Silicon Valley is crawling with venture capitalists looking for the next “big thing.” But figuring out what that will be is tough, if not impossible, for the average investor.
So we’re not going to win this game by trying to pick and choose winning companies from the sidelines. We need to diversify. And that means buying a tech fund. There are a couple ways to do this. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but there is one big missing piece: income. Both of these funds pay almost nothing in dividends (less than 1% between them), which means you’ll need to watch them like a hawk and rebalance when they get overvalued.
And then there’s the real risk you’ll get it wrong. Alternatively, you can have the pros do the hard work for you. There are a few closed-end funds (CEFs) that specialize in only tech stocks-while also paying a juicy dividend yield. Another option is the 8.2%-yielding Columbia Seligman Premium Technology Growth Fund (STK). It’s popular not only because of its juicy income stream but also its history.
STK has been around since 2009, so it has a longer track record than BST. A big reason for STK’s lower return is the bigger dividend-in order to sustain that big income stream for investors, STK had to take more money out of the tech market to keep payments to shareholders.
Inevitably, the profit-taking to sustain dividends resulted in lower profits over the long term, resulting in STK’s underperformance. If that doesn’t matter to you as much as the income stream, STK might be worth considering. But I’d also suggest the Nuveen NASDAQ 100 Dynamic Overwrite Fund (QQQX), which mimics QQQ but with a 6.5% dividend.
One group you won’t find speculating on cryptocurrencies, The world’s billionaires: folks like Warren Buffett (who once called bitcoin a gamble, not an investment), Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. And that should tell you all you need to know about betting your nest egg on the schizophrenic crypto market. Funny thing is, there’s another place you will find the world’s billionaires quietly converging. That’s in closed-end funds-a market Gates has been investing in for years. And another famous investor dropped a cool billion into CEFs just months ago.
] hoping the discount will narrow on its own, but one of the nicest points about this investment is that while you wait, you earn an above-average yield, given the discounted price. I couldn’t have said it better myself! Plus one of these 5 income wonders pays an almost unbelievable 10.0% in CASH!
