Monthly payouts in 2026 have run $0.102, $0.105, and $0.108, tracking close to the $0.1055 average seen across 2025. That is a meaningful step up from the $0.0865 average in 2024.
EMLC holds a broad mix of about 507 bonds issued by emerging market governments, all denominated in local currencies such as the Brazilian real, South African rand, Turkish lira, and Mexican peso. Almost the entire portfolio is sovereign debt at roughly 99 percent, so the fund is essentially a pure government credit exposure.
Chinese stocks have spent the last five years really testing the patience of even the most hardcore contrarians. Between the property sector struggles, the crackdown on tech platforms, and the constant friction over chip exports and tariffs, valuations have been pushed down across the board.
The iShares U.S. Treasury Bond ETF holds only U.S. Treasury notes and bonds across the maturity curve, providing the cleanest expression of flight-to-quality stability in a single ticker. Credit risk is effectively zero because every holding carries the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
The most senior officials from the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England are expected to take part in a desktop stress test to respond to another Lehman Brothers-style collapse.
The New York Fed's Survey of Consumer Expectations indicated that one-year inflation expectations rose to 3% in March, with gas price expectations jumping to 9%, the highest since March 2022.
EDIV tracks a yield-weighted index of dividend-paying companies across emerging markets. Rather than weighting by market cap, the fund tilts toward companies paying the highest dividends relative to their size. Banks, telecom operators, and consumer staples dominate the portfolio. The top positions include Brazilian beverage giant Ambev, Brazilian bank Bradesco, China Railway Group, and a cluster of Taiwanese industrials and telecom names.
The stock market hates inflation. There are not many stocks that are little affected today, if any. However, safe-haven stocks may even rise due to demand. At the top of this list is Altria (NYSE: MO), the cigarette and tobacco king. People who smoke do not stop smoking, even during periods of conflict.
While over-diversification is not a term you hear often, the financial industry has spent decades telling investors that more is better. More funds, more sectors, more geographic exposure, and more asset classes, galore. The thing is, when a retiree holds 15 or 20 ETFs across overlapping strategies, the result isn't going to be safety, more like dilution.
A market downtown in the first few years of retirement, combined with regular withdrawals, can permanently damage a portfolio's ability to sustain income over time. The same downturn occurring 10 or 15 years later, when withdrawals have already been funded by earlier growth, does far less harm.
Over the last few years, the market has seen a number of trends that have led to huge market moves. Apart from AI, which is the main impetus to the jet fueled "Magnificent 7" tech stocks leading the S&P 500 and still going strong, some of the booms that became busts in the latter part of 2025 going into January 2026 are: ETFs with extreme leverage Ultra high yield ETFs using options for income
