832 words Investing for Income -- Ordinary Investors Can Survive Bear Markets by Receiving Investment Income by YOURNAME If you're an ordinary person and investor, only faulty thinking and logic keeps you from investing for income. You too can turn investments into a positive cash flow that enhances your life now or in the future when you retire. This article will help you understand the common brainwashing holding you back. When the stock market goes down, ordinary investors must lose money -- right? That's what almost everybody assumes. Most people don't even think about this. They just take for granted that down markets equal losing money. Some investors are sophisticated enough to know that some people make money by selling stocks short or through trading options. However, although they probably don't understand all the details, they know -- quite rightly -- that using options and selling short are risky strategies. Even the pros quite often lose money on them. They're not appropriate for ordinary people. So, in today's stock market, ordinary investors are losing money, right? That's true. "Ordinary" investors are losing lots of money. But some people -- who are otherwise "ordinary" people -- are NOT "ordinary" investors. They're making money. These people are cashing or reinvesting dividend checks. They own stocks that pay quarterly dividends. Many of these companies pay dividends because they appreciate their shareholders. Some of them are required by law to pay out 90% or more of their profits. Receiving quarterly checks to spend or reinvest should sound good to most everybody, but somehow this has gone out of fashion. So many investors think the ONLY way to make money in the stock market is to buy a stock today and later on sell it for a higher price. They may be day traders who want to sell it later today. Or short term traders who want to sell it next month. Or they may consider themselves responsible long term "investors" (please -- NOT traders) who plan to hold on to the stock for at least twenty years. A lot of investment advisors seem to equate time with virtue. The longer you hold a stock, the "better" you are. But the object is the same -- make a profit when you sell. Good idea -- only study after study verifies the Efficient Market Hypothesis. That is, it's extremely difficult to pick out individual companies whose stock price will go up more than the market. Only a tiny percent of mutual fund managers, pension fund managers and stock picking gurus can beat the market in the long run. Dividends pay you a quarterly return of real money without having to sell your shares of stock, but we're advised to ignore or discount dividends. By 1999, the S&P 500's average dividend went below 1%, and this was considered a laughable return to people who'd seen their shares of Amazon and other high tech stocks double, triple or more in just a few years. Many ordinary investors didn't try to get rich. No, they followed the advice of sober financial writers to buy and hold index funds, so they would profit as the stock market as a whole went up over the years. However, 9 years later, on June 27, 2008 the Dow Jones average stood at just 11,400 -- 300 points BELOW its 1999 high of 11,700. And those are the big, quality companies. Many high tech and dot com stocks won't see their 1999 prices again for another decade or two -- if they've survived at all. Yet people who went for those laughable 1% dividends have cashed checks for the past nine years. And that 1% was the average of all S&P 500 stocks that pay any dividend at all. If an investor bought only the higher dividend paying stocks, they're received substantially more. And if they bought only stocks in the Mergent index, their dividends have gone up every year. So, who's laughing now? And what does the future hold for the market? Of course, nobody knows for sure, but there is no sunshine and blue sky on the horizon. Instead, we see -- 1. Rising oil and other energy prices -- with political unrest, war and possible war with Iran threatening to move the price of oil even higher. 2. Rising gold and silver prices. 3. The sinking U.S. dollar. 4. We're going into a U.S. presidential election -- and the leading candidate wants to eliminate the tax cuts that fueled the prosperity we've experienced since 2003 and pass new entitlement programs estimated to add $1 trillion to our budget. 5. The baby boomer generation has started to retire, which will place enormous strains on the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, take experienced labor out of the economy and depress stock and bond prices as they sell off their portfolios. 6. Terrorists still want to convert the entire world to their version of Islam. Buying and holding the market doesn't look too promising an investment strategy at the moment. Picking individual stocks is nearly impossible on a long term basis. Investing for income is the remaining choice. Pick stocks that pay dividends, and receive checks while we all wait for better times. SUMMARY With today's financial markets as uncertain and unstable as they are, traditional buy and hold, and pick winning stocks, strategies don't promise much return. You must rely on luck, and that's not reliable over the long term. Stocks have gone nowhere since 1999. Yet people who invest for income have received regular quarterly dividends. KEYWORDS investing for income, income investing, income investor, income investments, dividends, income investment, dividend, stock investing, dividend investing, stock dividends, invest for income RESOURCE BOX You don't have to wait decades for the market to go up before making money. By investing for income, you assure yourself of quarterly dividend checks whether the stock's price goes up or down. Learn the secrets to getting a high yield with maximum safety. Don't sit on your hands while your portfolio goes nowhere. YOURAFFILIATEURL (NOTE: Some article directories allow you to place hypertext links in this area and some don't. If they don't, just remove the link code but of course put your affiliate url at the bottom.)