Aggressive Income Feature

No US utility is better positioned to profit from America’s energy boom than Entergy Corp (NYSE: ETR). The company’s six electric utility units own and operate 22 gigawatts of power plants in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

Long-term contracts with creditworthy customers, strong finances and scale: Aggressive Holding NRG Energy (NYSE: NRG) features all of them. That’s why the unregulated power company continues to thrive, even as rivals flounder.

Australia is blessed with immense resources wealth, geographic proximity to emerging Asia, a pro-business government in rough fiscal balance, conservative banking policies, a corporate ethos for paying generous dividends and a currency that keeps pace with global inflation pressures over the long haul.

In short, it’s ripe with high-income opportunities for discriminating investors. And with the US dollar up 14 percent against the Australian dollar this year, great companies are selling at a discount.

When AES Corp (NYSE: AES) started doing business in the 1990s, it had a simple philosophy: Scour the globe for growing electricity demand and execute projects to meet it.

Shrinking traditional business and hefty debt have made wireline phone companies a reliable income source for short sellers in recent years. The game, however, has moved on.

It’s practically an article of faith among short sellers that betting against wireline phone companies is close to a sure thing.

That’s likely to prove disastrous, however, in the case of Consolidated Communications (NSDQ: CNSL), the only company in the sector not to cut its original dividend.