US News: 20 Best High-Yield Dividend Stocks For 2020 -- December 24, 2019

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, career, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

From US News, the 20 best high-yield dividend stocks for 2020:

• AB
• Bain Capital Specialty Finance (BCSF); 
• 8%; currently trading at $20; target: $19.50; 52-week range, $16 - $21
• EPD:
• largest public MLP in the world
• Analyst says about $3.1 billion of Enterprise's $9.1 billion project backlog through 2023 is set to go into service within the next six months; pays 6.6%; trading at $28; target, $35;
• ET: 10.3% yield; deserves a premium valuation according to one analyst
• F:
• HMLP (Hoegh LNG Partners): 11.4%; MLP
• MBT (Mobile Telesystems): 
• largest wireline telecom company in Russia; see link; special dividend;
• MPLX:
• PAA:
• Plains GP Holdings (PAGP):
• Altria Group (MO):
• Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A), but also RDS.B: 
• by reducing the stock's share count via buybacks by 25% through 2025 and nearly 50% through 2030, one analyst says Shell can grow its dividend per share by 4% annually without increasing its total annual distributions. Shell already pays a 6.5% dividend. Bank of America has a "buy" rating and $73 price target for RDS.A stock.
• China Petroleum & Chemical (SNP):
• OXY:
• WMB:
• Vermilion Energy (VET): global oil exploration and production;
• Telefonica Brasil (VIV):
• Westlake Chemical Partners (WLKP): MLP, ethylene production;
• Western Asset Mortgage Capital Corp (WMC): 
• Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure (FTAI): global transportation

Personal observation and comments at the link.

• This comment is interesting: "all these stocks are duds" and there may be some truth to that based on a number of factors; 
• Also: what ETF fund is this? Seems an investor has a friend at USNews and is trying to market their portfolio.
• This would not be a diversified portfolio; way too heavy in energy. 

Clickbait: another site, five best dividend stocks now, over at Investor's Business Daily. The article also provides a nerdy definition of a definition. If you need to know the definition of a dividend, you probably shouldn't be searching for articles recommending dividend-paying stocks. I do it for this reason: the more time certain stocks are recommended at these sites, there might be a reason. In this story, the five "best" dividend stocks now: Altria; ENB, Philip Morris, T, and AbbVie. Two cigarette companies and a pharmaceutical that will someday, if it doesn't already, market chemotherapy drugs to fight lung cancer.

ENB: that ticker symbol, that company, is popping up a lot this year.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, career, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

ISO New England. Down at the moment. "ISO Australia" is "up."  Unremarkable today.

Notes from Alaska: Jones Act leave New England out of the LNG boom.

Western Canada, the U.S. Gulf Coast, West Texas and Appalachia are all overflowing with natural gas. So much so that prices are down and occasionally have turned negative in some areas, when producers actually had to pay someone to take their gas.

Too bad there is no easy way to move more of that gas to the U.S. East Coast, New England and Canada’s Maritimes provinces, where natural gas customers are paying the highest prices in North America.

The obstacles are by land and by sea.

There is not enough pipeline capacity to reach the Eastern Seaboard. And a 99-year-old federal law, the Jones Act, requires that only U.S.-built and U.S.-flagged ships can move cargo between U.S. ports. The problem is, no such liquefied natural gas carriers exist.
Examples of too much supply in gas-producing regions and too little of it reaching the gas-consuming coast are economically painful.

Next-day natural gas prices at the Waha hub in the Permian Basin in West Texas tumbled to their lowest on record Nov. 27 because of limits on the amount of gas that could move out of the region by pipeline, Reuters reported. Prices fell to an average of 25 cents per million Btu that day. Even worse than a measly quarter, traders said small amounts of fuel were sold at negative prices as producers struggled to get rid of their gas.

That compares to the U.S. benchmark price at Henry Hub, Louisiana, which averaged about $4 per million Btu in November.

The imbalance is just as noticeable in Canada, where last May 3 spot prices at Alberta’s AECO pricing hub closed at just 5 cents per million Btu, about $2.50 less than the U.S. benchmark price that day.

Then in October, gas prices in Western Canada went into a freefall as a ruptured pipeline limited producers’ ability to get their gas to market. With one less conduit to move Canadian gas to customers south of the border, spot prices at Alberta’s AECO trading hub fell to 8 cents per million Btu on Oct. 19.

At the other end of the price spectrum in November, gas prices at the New England trading hub rose to $13.70 per million Btu for Nov. 21, about triple the year-to-date average, Reuters reported.

And when gas costs more, so does electricity. Next-day power prices in New England on Nov. 21 were about four times the national average.

When winter hits New England, power and gas prices can spike quickly because most consumers use gas to heat their homes and businesses, and most of the region’s electricity usually comes from gas-fired power plants.