Innovative Income Investor | Innovative Income Investor

Happy Thanksgiving to All

I want to wish everyone who travels through the website a Happy Thanksgiving. !!

The older I get the more I realize how thankful I am for almost everything in my life.

In particular I am thankful for having relatively good health–its hard to enjoy life if your health is going ‘south’. I am thankful for my wife who is more concerned with my health than I am and sees to it that I don’t do too many foolish activities.

I am thankful for our 5 kids and their families. While we have some of the normal family trials and tribulations for the most part our kids and their families are good, productive members of society and we are proud of them all. The 9 grandchildren, who range in age from 2 months to 21 are all a joy to us and keep us plenty busy with all their activities.

I am thankful to have a roof over my head, food in the pantry and an income that allows us to live relatively comfortably. It hasn’t always been this way so I can appreciate not having to lay awake nights worrying how to pay the mortgage.

And I am really thankful to all our readers and contributors to this website. This website was never intended to be such a big ‘project’, but here we are 18 years later (8 since this site began and 10 before that on “The Yield Hunter’) just trucking right along. These websites would not have survived without the near perfect contributions of all the readers and commenters –the self policing of comments relative to politics.

With the above I am thankful for those that have ‘donated’ to the financial support of the site. While no one will get rich on a donation site, it is really helpful to have contributions which cover the operation of a 6,000 page site. Without the contributions just the normal costs of a large website would be unbearable for someone to withstand. So thanks to those generous folks.

I hope all of you have as many reasons as I do to be thankful–so Happy Thanksgiving!!

Headlines of Interest to Holders of Preferred Stock and Baby Bonds

Below are press releases from companys with preferred stock and/or baby bonds outstanding–or just news of general interest. Earnings season is pretty much over so we will have slow news days for a month or two. Today in particular is totally dead (of course it is Thanksgiving Eve).

ARMOUR Residential REIT, Inc. Announces December 2024 Dividend Rate Per Common Share

As Expected Merchants Bancorp Calls Their Fixed to Floating Preferred

Indiana banker Merchants Bancorp (MBIN) has announced a redemption of their 6% fixed to floating rate preferred (MBINO) on 1/2/2025. This was generally expected when the company sold their new 7.625% non cumulative preferred last week.

The redemption announcement is here.

I think we can assume that MOST relatively stable companies with outstanding fixed-to-floating issues will call them when available. This does not include mREIT preferreds, which have let issues with a 10% reset ride. Interestingly both Customers Bancorp (CUBI) and Valley National Bank (VLY) continue to have very high yielding issues out there.

I have a mostly complete list of fixed to floating and floating rate issues here.

Awaiting the Big Economic News for the Week

We have lots of economic data being released today with the big news on inflation being released at 9 a.m. (central) within the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) report. But we also have lots of more minor news pieces being released as shown below.

Interest rates have held firm in the 4.27% area after the rally on Monday so for now it appears the upside pressure on rates has been lessened. We will see what the future holds–the Treasury still has to sell mounds of debt–but maybe less than originally forecast. The bigger question is whether we move closer to recession–or fall into a recession. Cuts in government spending will have consequences–what they will be or more importantly the timing of the cuts are less certain. It should be an interesting year ahead.

Yesterday I did double up my position in the Priority Income Fund 6% term preferred (PRIF-H). As I wrote yesterday (and we all know) making a buy or sell with relatively illiquid shares can be a challenge and while I hoped to pay around $24.10 I ended up with an average price of $24.20. The yield to maturity still remains favorable in the 8% (+/-) area.

Yesterday I updated my laundry list of holdings with the sector weightings of holdings. It’s all about CEF preferreds and insurance issues at 29% and 20% respectively. While I would would prefer to have a more balanced sector portfolio it isn’t going to happen right now-maybe in the future other sectors will present some bargains–but that time isn’t now.