By Tom Dyson

People always ask me what I think of the financial crisis. They know I’m an investment analyst, and they expect me to moan about the deep recession we’ve gotten ourselves into…

“This is the best thing that could ever have happened to us,” I tell them.

It’s as if someone just flicked on the “turbo” switch for income investors. Every dollar you invest is now bringing in two, three, even four times as much income as it did a year ago. As I covered last week, yields on the MLP sector are high. You can earn safe double-digit income in assets like Annaly. Best of all, options premiums are high, so you can turn world-class blue-chip stocks into 15% income yielders right now.

I write an advisory called The 12% Letter. It’s dedicated to finding the best income opportunities in the stock market. Right now, our portfolio of income-producing assets is just amazing.

Take Procter and Gamble as an example of the kind of blue chip we’re holding. Procter and Gamble has the highest dividend yield its had since 1988.

The dividend is 4%… and it grows every year. P and G now has 53 consecutive years of dividend growth… and over the last 10 years, the dividend has increased an average 11% a year.

To supplement Procter and Gamble’s 4% dividend yield, we’ve sold covered calls against our position… turning the 4% yield into a 15% yield. The quality of P and G’s business lets me know it’s a safe 15% yield as well.

Procter and Gamble generates obscene amounts of cash. In the last 12 months, P and G’s operations spun off so much cash, it was able to invest $3 billion in growing its business, buy back $10 billion in stock, pay off $2.8 billion in debt, and pay out $4.9 billion in dividends.

And as Dan Ferris highlighted last week, you can pick up names like Procter and Gamble and ExxonMobil at cheap prices right now.

Combine the cheap valuations, the dominant competitive advantages, and rich option premiums, and you have yourself a very safe stable of income stocks. (I encourage you to learn about companies like Annaly and pipeline stocks to round out your income portfolio. These ideas are also safe double-digit yielders.)

Right now, the yield in my newsletter’s portfolio is 13%, including the income from our option selling. In other words, $100,000 spread evenly across the stocks in the portfolio will spin off $13,000 per year in income.

To get safe 13% annual income from the world’s strongest stocks is unbelievably attractive… especially when you consider 30-year mortgage rates are 4.75% and national CD rates are 2%.

This opportunity is available right now. And it’s paying off for those who have the guts to stand up and buy when no one else will.

Good investing,

Tom

Last 5 posts by Tom Dyson

• If You Like Earning Steady Income, There's No Better Business Than This - April 9th, 2009
• These Bloodhounds Want to Raise Rates by 10% - February 3rd, 2009