Investing in Funds: A Quarterly Analysis --- Investing for Income: Searching for Income When Rates Are So Low
Plain-vanilla bonds aren't enough these days.</br></br>In an era of painfully low interest rates, financial pros are advising income-hungry investors to include diverse assets such as dividend-paying stocks, emerging-markets stocks, real-estate investment trusts and high-yield corporate bonds in their conservative portfolios.</br></br>Some advisers see these areas as havens compared with broad stock-market indexes. However, these assets have become riskier now that yield-seeking investors have been moving into them and have bid up prices.</br></br>Moreover, investments that seem above the fray can fall hard. There have been periods in the past when some of them tanked; the average real-estate mutual fund, for example, shed 48% between September and November 2008 -- the category's worst three-month loss of the past 20 years.</br></br>Here's a look at why investment pros are recommending these four areas to conservative investors -- but also what could go wrong.