Be careful how you buy your bonds. The most popular tickers have four “fatal flaws” that’ll doom you to underperformance at best, or at worst leave you hanging in the event of a market meltdown!

Let’s pick on the widely followed and owned iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) as an example. It has attracted over $15 billion in assets because:

1. It’s convenient and as easy to buy as a stock.
2. It’s diversified (for better or worse, as we’ll see shortly) with 1,327 individual holdings.
3. It pays well, at nearly 6% today.

The accessibility of funds like HYG appears cute and comfortable enough.… Read more

The bombs continue to fall in the Middle East. But we contrarians know something the crowd always forgets at times like this:

The world is always burning somewhere.

At times like these, our Contrarian Income Report dividend strategy shines. Our portfolio yields 8.2% on average, and those dividends roll in no matter what the world throws at us.

The result? No need to sell into a downturn to get the cash we need. And we get the chance to go on offense, too, snagging dividends on the dips and boosting our income stream (and upside potential) as we do.

Rinse and repeat.… Read more

The Iran conflict has, of course, sent oil prices spiking. And the tensions in the region are unlikely to end soon.

Wherever you stand on the conflict, let’s set that aside for a moment and look at the situation through an investment lens—specifically what it means for those invested in oil, either directly or through shares of producers.

It’s clear that anyone holding oil and oil-related stocks saw a bump in their share prices after hostilities broke out, and prices have bounced higher and lower since.

Let’s look at exactly what’s played out so far this year (as of this writing) from the oil-price side—through the crude-tracking United States Oil Fund (USO)—and the producer side, through the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE).… Read more

This high-yield sector is being taken to the woodshed by the Wall Street spreadsheet jockeys this year.

The contrarian opportunity? Big yields up to 15.6% in BDC Land. Some of these deals are trading for as little as 72 cents on the dollar.

Which means opportunists like us have been handed something rare: wild yields of 11% to 15.6% for as little as 72 cents on the dollar.

Business development companies (BDCs) are “Main Street bankers” because they do what Wall Street won’t: provide capital to small and midsized businesses that the big banks either ignore entirely, or won’t touch without demanding a firstborn as collateral.… Read more

These worries around private credit are giving us CEF investors a nice “bonus”: They’re throwing a very positive light on our favorite 8%+ income plays.

After all, the CEFs we hold in the portfolio of our CEF Insider service offer transparency, high (and often monthly paid) dividends and attractive discounts, too, in part due to geopolitical worries.

We’ll get to a specific bond fund that’s giving us a generous discount and an 11.6% dividend in a moment. First, let’s take a closer look at what’s really happening with private credit, and the opportunity that concerns around it are setting up for us now.… Read more

$500K can be enough money to retire on. Even as early as age 50!

The trick is to convert the pile of cash into cash flow that can pay the bills. I’m talking about $40,574.93 per year in dividend income on that nest egg, thanks to 8%+ average yields.

These are passive payouts that show up every quarter or, in many cases, every month.

Meanwhile, we keep that $500K nest egg intact. Or, better yet, grind that principal higher steadily and safely.

Got more in your retirement account? Cool—more monthly dividend income for you!

We’ll talk specific stocks, funds and yields in a moment.… Read more

One thing is clear from the last few weeks: The geopolitical chaos never stops.

We contrarians get that. But the first-level crowd does not. When we’re hit with a war, snap tariffs or a pandemic (ugh!), most investors panic.

And the truth is, chaos—whether it’s war in Iran or fears that AI will erase whole industries—is coming at us faster than ever.

Most people think they can handle this wave of worry. But it pays to remember the famous Mike Tyson quote: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

True in life and investing. It’s just another way of saying that the same investors who think they can handle the latest “punch in the face” are often the first to turtle and sell low.… Read more

Can income investors get in on the coming SpaceX IPO before the stock goes public (and ideally without overpaying?) Let’s find out.

No announcement of an IPO has been made, but SpaceX’s recent acquisition of Starlink and Musk’s xAI firm signal that an offering is in the pipeline.

Even though the company still feels relatively new, SpaceX successfully launched its first rocket 18 years ago. Since then, it has reportedly earned roughly $20 billion in government contracts, with Morningstar recently reporting that it posted about $8 billion of profits on $15 billion of revenue in 2025.

If those numbers stand up—and there’s no way for us to confirm them—that’s a profit margin above 50%.… Read more

What’s better than getting to buy 6.6%-11% yields at discounted prices?

How about snapping those sweet dividend payers while momentum is on your side?

Late in 2025, I wrote about a “small-cap reawakening”—a bullish tailwind from retreating Federal Reserve rates that had begun to propel smaller companies forward and could continue well into 2026.

So far, so true. Small- and mid-cap stocks (or “SMIDs”) alike have been cruising full sail ahead while their larger cousins have been dead in the water.

2026 Has Been a Reversal of Longstanding Large-Cap Dominance

Better still for you if you haven’t yet taken the plunge into Wall Street’s more diminutive stocks: Small caps’ hot start has done little to drive up valuations.… Read more

AI has investors in a roil again—this time over … a blog post?

The article in question—written by Citrini Research and posted on Substack—was fear-based (to say the least!). It essentially argued that AI was going to cause a “jobs apocalypse,” wiping out demand and taking the economy down with it.

It was pure science fiction. But it was enough to wipe $2 trillion from stocks in one day on February 22. And it comes after the same sorts of fears have hit software stocks, IT-security stocks and even logistics stocks over the last few weeks.

It’s one of the most absurd panics I’ve ever seen, frankly.… Read more