Author Archive: Brett Owens

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the Strait of Hormuz is closed once again.

Crude oil jumped 9% Monday on the news, and on cue we have vanilla investors piling into everything and anything with a rig or pipeline attached. It’s an understandable reaction, but we careful contrarians can play this smarter.

Still, the energy sector is cheap after months of investor avoidance, and today we’re going to talk about seven names that pay between 4.8% and 13.9%.

These energy payers dish their dividends with or without a geopolitical crisis.

Let’s look at these seven oil names averaging 8.8% yields right now.… Read more

I need to ask your honest opinion, my careful contrarian! Should this reader move on from me?

“I’m 89 years young and active,” Peter wrote. “Don’t need income—only growth.”

(I’m the income guy. Do I have a growth arrow in my quiver, or should this young man look elsewhere to get rich?)

First of all Peter, you’re the man. You’re doing many, many things right to eschew current income at the spry age of 89. Good for you for staying active and for being in a position to still pursue portfolio price gains.

Peter went on to explain that he holds six of my official recommendations.… Read more

This market is in a three-way “tug-of-war”—and it’s set up some sweet deals on our favorite 9%+ dividends.

The Fed. The White House. Iran. A peep from any of the above and stocks soar (or tank).

But we contrarians can see through the short-term fog here.

We’re buying this volatility, in part because we’re playing the long game on AI, and the likelihood it’ll cap wage growth and inflation in the long run (more on that below).

But in the here and now, we need to play it smart—and zero in on payers that cushion our downside so we can collect their rich payouts in peace.… Read more

This is one pricey market, and if you’re hesitant to put new money to work, I am sympathetic. After all, we’re here for the dividends. We want our principal to stay intact, so I understand it doesn’t make much sense buying high if we’re going to collect dividends but then watch the stock market proceed lower.

Valuations seem to have decoupled from fundamentals in many cases. As we speak, SpaceX, for example, claims an addressable market of $28.5 trillion—roughly the size of the entire U.S. economy. Which is all fair and well—but it also commands galactic premiums at 100 times sales.… Read more

In the working world, paychecks show up every two weeks. Or at least, every month. Which keeps up with the pace of monthly bills, charges, and expenses.

In the stock market world, payouts (dividends!) arrive every quarter. That’s 30 days in between bills, but a full 90 days spanning divvies.

Hence the appeal of monthly dividends. These management teams know that the investors who hold their stock are here for the payment. It’d better show up every 30 days, and it’d better be the same amount. No cuts allowed.

Problem is, some of these monthly payers are writing checks their business can’t cash.… Read more

The crowd is still way too worried about interest rates—and their fear is handing us a shot at two stout monthly dividends (yielding up to 11.9%) on the cheap.

We can thank new Fed chair Kevin Warsh for ginning up the panic here. Because he was appointed by President Trump, the suits expected Warsh to push for lower rates right off the hop. Instead, the new Fed chief has gone full Dirty Harry on inflation.

Investors are buying it. But they’re already on the wrong side of the story.

Oil has plunged to around $68 a barrel. And the job numbers for June, out last week, were soft, with the number of new gigs around half of what it was expected to be.… Read more

Wall Street analysts have one job: predict where companies’ earnings are going in the coming quarter. Sounds simple enough, except said suits aren’t so good at it!

For the most recent earnings season, these forecasting fruit flies buzzed around modeling 12% earnings growth for the quarter. The S&P 500’s companies showed 27% profit growth—more than double what the “experts” predicted in their spreadsheets. They were way off.

So what does it mean when earnings come in at more than double the forecast? It means these companies have plenty of room—and reason—to hand more of that cash back to us. And that matters because over the long run stock prices follow their dividends.… Read more

Happy anniversary to my friends Charlie and Ginny, who were fired by their lame financial advisor this time last year.

Why? And, more importantly, how are they doing one year later? Let’s discuss.

Our friends have the same goal as retirees like us: to put the pile of money we saved our entire lives to work for us in retirement. Then, use said pile to provide income, so we don’t have to worry about the pile, the market, the news, and the headlines.

That is where the couple “went wrong,” according to the person they paid to give them “advice!”

Their transgression?… Read more

Sell in May? Ha! Try “buy in July.”

Truth is, summer is the best time to troll for dividend deals—especially July. We’re going to “back up the truck” on two tickers in a sec.

Why July?

Because it’s the strongest month of the year for stocks, according to a 2024 report from the Carson Group, a financial-advisory firm. Here’s the upshot: Over the 20 years leading up to July 2024, the S&P 500 rose 2.3% on average.

And that’s just the average. Many years saw bigger gains than that.

This is our short-term play.

On the horizon, we’ve got the midterms.… Read more

We should avoid REITs right now because the Fed talks tough about raising rates.

Or we should buy REITs right now because the Fed’s worries are overblown.

Which is true? Well, it depends.

Let’s talk about our beloved real estate investment trusts, or REITs, which we favor as retirement-focused investors. REITs must dish most of their profits to us as dividends. A congressional act created them decades ago, and it requires them to send us at least 90% of their taxable income as payouts, in exchange for tax advantages.

Now the lazy Wall Street maxim holds that REITs trade opposite interest rates.… Read more