This has got to be the most “hidden” (maybe hated?) stock-market run I’ve ever seen.

The headlines are all doom and gloom (I think you’ll agree), but behind it all, the stock market is on a roll—returning 31% in just the last year. That’s more than triple the market’s long-term average yearly return of around 10%.

Where does that leave those of us who look to stocks for growth and income? Is there more runway ahead, or is it too late to buy in?

In my opinion, this 31% gain is setting the table for more, and we’ll get into exactly why in a moment.… Read more

Preferred stocks are a little-known dividend secret. Worth knowing, by the way—they can yield up to 9.9%!

These “forgotten cousins” of common stocks can make a dividend portfolio. Plus, the discounts! Today we can buy a basket with some ingredients fetching as little as 89 cents on the dollar.

A quick refresher on preferreds. When a company needs capital, it typically either sells common stock—the AAPL to our Apple, the JPM to our JPMorgan—or bonds. But there is a third option, and plenty of companies use it: preferred stock.

Like common stock, preferreds give you a sliver of ownership in a company, they can improve in price based on the company’s performance, and they pay dividends.… Read more

The time has come to make a move on this software-stock selloff. And we’re going to use our favorite income plays—closed-end funds (CEFs)—to do it.

That’s because the story here—that AI is going to harm the sector, cost jobs and hurt the economy as a whole—is the opposite of what’s really happening on the ground. And we’ve finally got some reliable data to prove it.

A CEF that’s well-positioned to tap this disconnect is a 7.8%-payer called the BlackRock Science and Technology Term Trust (BSTZ).

It’s a name we’ve long held in our CEF Insider portfolio, and it’s in a “sweet spot” here.… Read more

I was in heaven. One baseball toss away was a man of surreal size, Aaron Judge.

The New York Yankee slugger. All six-foot-seven standing in a minor league ballpark right here in Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park.

My family and I sat second row, right behind the dugout. I’d waited until just four hours before first pitch to buy the tickets. (A contrarian purchasing strategy that usually works because most buyers don’t have the stomach for it. Here once again it paid off with reasonably priced dugout seats to watch the Yanks at a fraction of the price we’d have paid in the Bronx.)… Read more

Few people realize it, but there’s a way to take a “low” dividend yield and “convert” it to a payout four times higher. Maybe even more.

The stocks we need to get this “hidden” payout are hiding in plain sight.  To find them, we need to be on the lookout for three key strengths:

• A growing, and ideally accelerating, dividend.
• A history of share buybacks, and …
• A high “shareholder yield,” which combines the first two points (I’ll come back to that in a second).

Even better if we can find a stock whose share price has fallen behind dividend growth.… Read more

Hands down, one of the biggest retirement risks I’ve come across is when investors try to play it safe.

That’s because, in hiding out from volatility, they stunt their returns and end up locked into the workforce for years longer than they need to be.

Worst thing is, many of these “safe” options sport high yields that never deliver in reality. Consider a savings account:

Source: Forbes Advisor

To be sure, the highest rates can look appealing, like the 5.8% here. But in reality, larger balances earn closer to 3.9%.

You can do a little better with a 30-year Treasury, which yields around 4.9% now.… Read more

Consumer staples are boring and reliable. And they typically pay generous dividends.

But generous has nothing on these fantastic yields from 5.2% to 11.3%!

Historically, staples have held up better than the broader market during downturns. Lately, however, that hasn’t happened:

Consumer Staples: A Rare Failure to Protect

Uncertainty fueled a staples rally across the first couple months of the year. But when the war in Iran triggered a near-correction in the S&P 500, the sector didn’t just take the same elevator down—they found a faster one.

The rub? The war sent inflation expectations through the roof. Defensive though staples might be, when consumers really start pinching pennies, they shift away from the pricey brand names that anchor this sector and into private-label products from smaller public and even private companies.… Read more

The year isn’t even four months old, and we’ve already been hit with three events that would normally send markets tumbling:

• The Iran conflict.
• The hit to software stocks, after AI raised concerns about their business model.
• The private-credit collapse.

We’re going to zero in on that third point today, because while the Iran situation is an ongoing tragedy, it will be resolved at some point. When it does, the relief rally will likely be significant.

The software story is similar. Over time, I see these stocks as winners in the AI race, not victims.

But the private-credit tale is different, because what it’s actually telling us about the economy—that it’s stable and growing—is the exact opposite of what most people think it’s saying.… Read more

Monthly dividends and panic readings? Now that’s a path to profits.

Two weeks ago, my Contrarian Income Report readers and I were staring at a recent decline in DoubleLine Yield Opportunities Fund (DLY). Buy more, hold or sell? DLY owners were understandably jumpy. Something must be wrong with the bond portfolio itself, right? Why else would it be down?

The bond fund had just registered its deepest panic reading—which I will share with you in a moment—since we’ve owned it. My contrarian gut said buy. Always buy the hysteria. But, I admit, my taste isn’t for everyone.

(“Dad, why are you buying sardines with tomato sauce?”… Read more

I just took a glance at the Fed futures market and, frankly, couldn’t believe what I saw.

These traders don’t see a rate cut from the Fed until July of 2027. And even then, only a bare majority do:

Source: CME Group

C’mon man! That’s 15 months from now.

I know predictions are tough, but from where I sit, this one seems awfully hard to justify.

For one, Trump administration pick Kevin Warsh is likely to be installed as Fed chair long before then, with Jay Powell’s term officially up next month. Sure, Warsh has been hawkish in the past, but over the last few months, he’s been in line with the administration’s wish for lower borrowing costs.… Read more