Author Archive: Brett Owens

Don’t look now, but crude oil is back over $100 a barrel. Prices are on fire, rising 20% since July, and the Strait of Hormuz is still shut. Diesel fuel, the transportation fossil fuel of record, sits at a record $6.23 per gallon.

WTI: Up, Up and Away

Now, betting on geopolitical outcomes is a dicey game, so placing a bet on the crisis extending or world peace breaking out is tricky. The sure bet is looking at five closed-end funds (CEFs) paying 8.5% on average. Four of these five funds have had an impressive run, and they now trade at narrower discounts than their five-year norms, so we’re watching.… Read more

“How’s your hip?” my wife asked. The emphasis on hip was bearish for me as I limped from, well, you’ll see.

My gait had been good (dare I say normal?) for the last 10 days. She justifiably wondered what was up.

“The jog,” I mumbled. And shrugged.

“He cleared you to jog?”

Really, he did! Sort of. “Yes,” I replied confidently. “He said yesterday it was probably OK.”

I had just completed a three-week round of shots to calm down my hip osteoarthritis, but these treatments tend to rile up the joint before helping. So, my jog was… premature.

I had to admit: “I went a little fast.… Read more

One of our favorite pipeline plays—Enbridge (ENB)—has taken a tumble. It’s set up a sweet buying opportunity.

We can thank rising rates (with an “assist” from overdone trade war fears!) for this opening.

Here’s the state of play with this one, which I’ve nicknamed the “natty” king because, despite its Canadian domicile, it ships 20% of the natural gas consumed in the US.

• The stock yields a gaudy 5.6%.
• Enbridge is a “toll booth” on North American energy consumption, collecting fixed rates for the use of its pipelines and storage facilities, no matter what oil and gas prices do.

Rate hikes are back on the table. For most investors, that’s bad news. But for shareholders in one high-yielding corner of the market, it could be the best thing that’s happened all year.

Own bonds? New issues get more attractive, so your existing ones lose value. Own stocks? Higher rates raise borrowing costs and make bonds more competitive with dividends. Neither is a great setup.

But business development companies (BDCs) have a more complicated relationship with interest rates. In fact, these high-single- and double-digit yielders could get a much-needed spark if Warsh & Co. green-light the first rate hike since 2023.… Read more

Let’s discuss an investor who banks a $34,533 dividend check on the first of every month. From one fund alone!

Think you can survive on $34,000 in passive income per month, too? From just one position?

Of course you do. And right now, you and I can buy this monthly payer for a better price than the big shot! (Who, by the way, keeps working long days—not what many of us would do with a $34K monthly paycheck!)

I’m talking about Emmanuel “Manny” Roman, the CEO of PIMCO. Yes, that PIMCO, the most famous bond shop in the world. It was the old home of Bond King Bill Gross, who has since been deposed.… Read more

Is 2026 a replay of 2022? Plenty of bond investors think so.

But they’re wrong. And we’re happy to take the other side of the argument!

We’ll do that in the form of a closed-end fund (CEF) yielding a stout 10.3%—and sending that fat payout drip, drip, dripping into our accounts every month.

As we break down this overdone fear, I think you’ll see that it’s a classic example of “first-level” thinking. That’s another way of saying that the mainstream crowd is, as usual, making decisions based on the headlines and nothing more.

The “headline” in this case is the spike in 30-year Treasury yields, which recently broke over highs last seen in late 2023, after the Fed had had pumped rates from 0.25% in early 2022 to all the way up to 5.5%:

Treasury Rates Rise, Bond Holders Panic

That chart alone is enough to prompt first-level investors to dump bonds.… Read more

Small-cap stocks have been so miserable for so long that even a healthy beating of their large-cap peers across 2026 hasn’t been enough to give them any buzz.

Good news for us, and anyone else looking for 6.7%-16.3% yields on the cheap.

It’s been a rough decade for the “junior mint” shelf of stocks! Mega-caps have been the flavor du jour. In fact, by the S&P 600’s count, small caps have only topped their big brothers once since 2016—and that was a “lesser loss” in 2022!

Wall Street is understandably skeptical that 2026’s outperformance is a sign of a bigger pivot.… Read more

Three investors walk into a bar and start talking retirement. But just two of them volunteer their honest opinions.

The third sits there and haughtily judges them!

First up, a 75-year-old retiree. He looks at what the S&P 500 (America’s ticker!) offers these days. Today, it’s never paid less. Our veteran investor shrugs and gives up on dividends: “Not much you can do about these paltry yields.”

His counterpart is a 79-year-old who was told as a young man that he would care more about his dividends as he aged. Yup. (Spoiler alert! “They” were right, the man says. More from him later.)… Read more

It’s September—traditionally the weakest month for stocks—and we contrarians are responding.

We’ve got the (ugh!) midterms coming up. Tariff unpredictability has returned. And scorching long-term bond yields have (so far) resisted Treasury Secretary Bessent’s efforts to rein them in.

Let’s be honest: Things are going to get volatile.

Our plan? Go on offense and defense at the same time.

Of course, income is at the center of our strategy. We’re tapping market choppiness with an 8.8%-paying fund that loves volatility and sports a payout that gets stronger the longer the chaos lasts.

In fact, this fund—the Nuveen S&P 500 Dynamic Overwrite Fund (SPXX)—is already hiking payouts, to the tune of 25% with the July payment.… Read more

This company handed nearly one-third of its value back to shareholders last year. I’m talking about 30.5% of the market cap back to its owners!

By contrast, the S&P 500 yields 1.0%, an all-time low. So we’re talking about a stock that is dishing 30 times the dividend yield of “America’s ticker.”

The headline yield on Albertsons Cos. (ACI) doesn’t do its “total yield” justice. It reads 5.5%. Sure, but the grocer also offered an additional 25% rebate via buybacks. This number is invisible to every yield screen, stock scanner, and (yes) AI prompt asking about dividends. Which is great for contrarians like us searching for value!… Read more