The only thing I love more than dividends is dividend growth. And ‘tis the season for payout raises as  first-quarter earnings season kicks into gear.

I have my eye on companies that have recently announced dividend hikes of 28%, 52%, even 150%. If we get similar dividend growth this time around, great—more money in our pockets. But just as important is the confidence they’d be communicating with big raises amid an extremely uncertain economic environment.

Regular readers know about my “Dividend Magnet” strategy—three signs that can lead to massive price gains. The most important sign is dividend growth, which is management’s way of saying “We’re growing profits, and we know those profits are going to stick!”… Read more

Most indicators are misleading investors right now, with some looking rosy and others seemingly saying it’s time to panic.

So today we’re going to parse through the noise and look at what’s really going on under the hood of the US economy.

Then I’m going to give you our latest “CEF Insider intel” on what to do with stocks—and funds (specifically closed-end funds) that hold them. We’re also going to dig into one bond fund yielding an outsized 13% that’s set to benefit as uncertainty grows.

Investor “Mood Ring” Says It’s Time to Panic …

Consider the CNN Fear & Greed index, a closely watched sentiment indicator.… Read more

The economy is slowing. And if you believe that these tariff-tapping brakes are going to land us in a recession, these tax-equivalent yields up to 12.4% are for you.

This is the time to recession-proof our retirement holdings. The new administration appears to want to get a slowdown “out of the way” early. Atlanta’s GDPNow forecast says the economy is already shrinking:

Meanwhile the latest University of Michigan consumer sentiment report shows that confidence is falling fast. The index dropped to 57.9 in March—its lowest level since November 2022:

Back then we were emerging from a sharp and painful 10-month bear market.… Read more

Don’t buy into this trade panic—truth is, the market’s “tariff tantrum” is a goldmine for us contrarians. Today we’re going to mine it with two stocks whose dividends are skyrocketing—including one that’s pumped up its payout by 410% in the last decade alone.

Worrying Times Are When Fortunes Are Made

We contrarians know that times like these are when the mainstream crowd makes its biggest mistakes. And those blunders give us the chance to snag the strong, and growing, dividends they’ve tossed in a panic.

Like the first of two stocks we’re going to talk about today. From a first-level analysis, this Ireland-based company looks like it’ll get run over the next time “Tariff Man” holds a press conference.… Read more

In our Thursday article, we talked about a “quiet shift” in the markets, from growth stocks to value—and we named 2 CEFs yielding 9%+ that are primed to profit from it.

Yes, the recent jump in volatility is a big reason for that. So today, we’re going to look at another side of the rotation we’re seeing—a shift from passive investing to active.

Index Funds Are so 2023

As we move further into 2025, it’s getting clearer to me that we’re into a stock-picker’s market. Sitting in an index fund just won’t cut it.

That said, at my CEF Insider service, we’re still bullish on stocks (and stock-focused closed-end funds, many of which hand us 8%+ yields), and we’ll get into two stock-focused funds, along with another that holds preferred stocks—kind of a stock/bond hybrid—below.… Read more

Interest rates are trending lower, which means real estate investment trusts (REITs) are rallying. These “bond proxies” tend to move alongside bonds and opposite rates.

If you believe the economy is likely to continue slowing, then select REITs are intriguing income plays here. Especially those yielding between 7.2% and 13.2%, which we’ll discuss shortly.

As I’ve been saying for a few weeks, the real story is in longer rates, namely the 10-year Treasury. I spelled this out in a recent article.

To recap, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been upfront that he and President Trump are focused on the 10-year Treasury rate (the “long” end of the yield curve), and not the Fed benchmark (the “short” end).… Read more

Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a quiet trend in investing—and today we’re going to tap into it with two funds yielding near 10%.

That’s right: enough to pay you back just shy of 10% of your initial buy a year in dividends alone.

What’s more, these two income plays—closed-end funds (CEFs), to be precise—have been around for nearly a century, with one dating from 1927 and the other having launched in 1929. That last date, of course, is notorious, as it heralded the start of the worst market crash in history.

I bring these two CEFs up now because their long institutional memory gives them a level of reliability that few other funds can match.… Read more

The average S&P 500 drawdown during a recession since 1990 is 40%. Recent economic data show that we are now careening towards a slowdown. Check out the bearish trends from Atlanta’s GDPNow forecast:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is standing watch as DOGE shifts resources and money away from the public sector. The Secretary needs lower long-term interest rates so that he can sell bonds without breaking Uncle Sam’s bank!

How does this work? Last month alone, DOGE chopped 63,000 jobs. Bessent welcomes this softening of the labor market—increasing the available labor supply—because he has $9 trillion in federal debt to refinance this year.… Read more

Let me start with a prediction: Interest rates are going to fall this year—and by more than most people think.

When that happens, bonds—including one discounted 8.7%-paying bond fund we’ll get into shortly—are poised to head skyward.

Rates down, bonds up. That’s the law of Bond-land. It’s a simple fact that a lot of people, hopelessly caught up in the “tariffs cause inflation” storyline, are missing.

Bessent (and Trump) Go Over Jay Powell’s Head

Forget about the Fed standing pat on rates last week. Forget about Jay Powell saying he’s waiting for more clarity on the Trump administration’s policies before setting the ultimate direction of rates.… Read more

Here’s some good news in these uncertain times: Most investors who’ve invested for the long haul are well-equipped to deal with this selloff. That’s because, over the last five years, stocks have been on an absolute tear.

In that period, the S&P 500 has delivered an average annual total return of 19.1%, as of this writing. That’s more than double the average of about 8% in the last century.

Looking at Various Time Frames Can Skew Our View

Think back five years for a moment. Back then, the stock market’s prospects looked bleak, indeed, as we were at the beginning of the pandemic-driven selloff.… Read more