From Tom Dyson, publisher, Palm Beach Research Group: Here’s a story from my past…

It was 2006, and I’d just started writing The 12% Letter for Stansberry Research. At the time, interest rates were far higher than today. Bank CDs were yielding 5.34%. Mortgages were around 6.23%. And safe corporate bonds were paying 5.46%.

The 12% Letter’s portfolio was stuffed with stocks yielding above 15%.

In my second issue, I didn’t recommend a stock with a double-digit yield… I recommended McDonald’s, paying 2.4%.

McDonald’s is a great business with a rising stock price. Yet investors despise it.

It’s an income play. The longer you hold, the bigger the dividends get. Hold for five years, and you’ll get 4.5% in annual dividends. Hold for 10 years, and you may end up with 7% annual distributions (using today’s buy price as the base).

As fantastic as that sounds, this stock—even if nothing changes in the company’s operations—holds out the promise of a 250% gain within the next five years. That’s a conservative estimate. It could grow even more…

My recommendation raised some eyebrows. It had such a low yield, especially compared to the 15%-yielding stocks already in The 12% Letter’s portfolio.

But watch what happened over the next 10 years…


First, McDonald’s raised its dividend 340%…

Today, readers who took my advice back in 2006 are making an 8.5% dividend yield on their McDonald’s stock (based on the $40 per share they paid for it). And that dividend is only going to keep getting bigger.

In 2017, they’ll likely make over 10% in dividend yields.

My readers are making great dividend income. And, the stock has risen 240% over the decade… just as I predicted.

Because of its rising dividend, McDonald’s has become a huge income payer for my readers who were willing to wait 10 years. Where else can you get safe 8.5% dividend yields in a zero-interest-rate world?

This is a great example of what happens when you buy strong operating businesses that pay larger and larger dividends. You can’t help but get rich.

I hope my readers keep holding McDonald’s. If the company keeps raising its dividend by 10% per year, as it has done recently (more, actually: an average 17.5% per year over the past 20 years), McDonald’s stock will be paying 61.3% dividend yields (yields on cost) in 30 or 40 years. And, with a constant dividend yield, the price might have risen to $1,689.

There is no more certain way of generating income and accumulating wealth in the stock market than by buying shares of great operating businesses that constantly and relentlessly raise their dividends. Companies like McDonald’s.

Mark and I wanted to capture this force when we were designing the Palm Beach Research Group’s core investment strategy. I call it the “power of compounding rising dividends.”

So, we created the Legacy Portfolio. All 13 companies in the portfolio have raised their dividends. Mark invested $2.5 million of his own money in them. He’s already made over $500,000 in profits.

And just as McDonald’s did, in 10 years’ time, I predict Mark’s portfolio will be paying out close to a 10% yield, and his money will have grown at least 250%.

(Current Legacy subscribers can click here to review Chief Analyst Greg Wilson’s notes from his recent trip to the 2015 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders’ meeting. Berkshire is “superinvestor” Warren Buffett’s holding company. And McDonald’s is a classic “Buffett-type” investment.)

Reeves’ Note: The Legacy Portfolio is currently closed to new members until 2016. Click here to access the VIP waiting list. You can get early access to Legacy next year at a special discounted rate… and real Legacy content and updates from us over the next 12 months.