Author Archive: Brett Owens

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

You didn’t think the US Treasury Secretary was just going to sit back and watch interest rates rise, did you? Of course not. We careful contrarians knew better!

This country can’t afford high rates. Not on a $40 trillion debt pile! The interest payments are already too much for Uncle Sam to handle.

Yet the bond market decided to test Secretary Bessent, who replied emphatically.

Or did he?

I’ve argued in these pages that rising long-term rates would not be allowed. At some point, they would draw a reaction from the Treasury Secretary. And now that we have the reaction, I ran the numbers to see what happens during similar bond operations to the one Bessent just announced.… Read more

Investors just don’t understand Home Depot (HD).

They see the world’s biggest home-improvement retailer as a proxy for the real estate market: When home sales are strong, the thinking goes, more people buy homes—and go on to renovate them.

Makes sense. But it’s only half the story (at best!).

It’s true that many people—your income strategist included—locked in a sweet mortgage rate during the pandemic. So why would they give that up for today’s budget-busting 30-year rates?

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that, as mortgage rates have climbed this year, HD’s stock has slipped, erasing a big gain in early 2026 (see in purple below):

Rising Mortgage Rates Squeeze HD’s Stock

It’s left HD shares just below where they were at the start of 2026, while the S&P 500 has popped just shy of 12%, as of this writing.… Read more

We contrarians rarely play in the tech sector. It’s just not built for us.

Technology stocks are often overhyped, overcovered and valuation-rich. Wall Street already loves them, which means there’s no room for upgrade-triggered pops and few inefficiencies for us to exploit.

They’re also historically dividend-poor.

And Right Now, Tech Stocks Are Dividend-Destitute

But despite ludicrous prices in the likes of Palantir Technologies (PLTR) and Crowdstrike Holdings (CRWD), the sector as a whole is starting to look more reasonable. Tech stocks’ forward P/E has quickly winnowed to near pre-COVID levels and isn’t much more expensive than the broader market.

And while the S&P 500’s tech companies might as well be paying IOUs, a few of the sector’s less traveled names look downright generous.… Read more

Riddle me this, my fellow contrarian. This company’s dividend grew 160% in three years. Yet, its stock went nowhere!

Dead money?

Or a dividend grower that was due for a pop?

Let’s discuss the special stocks with the exact same setup today. You may even own one! Is it time to sell? Or back up the truck?

Wall Street suits would take one look at this comatose stock and say it’s “dead money.” That’s how they played it in March 2025 when this “dirty” dividend grower was hiking its payout on deaf ears.

ConocoPhillips (COP) boasted 3-year dividend growth of 160% and 3-year stock growth of -1.7%.… Read more

Here’s something we never hear about: The wonderful things that can happen when a stock “pays us back” in dividends.

It’s a shame more dividend investors don’t consider this, because it really is the “holy grail” for us contrarian income players!

What do I mean by “pays us back”? One way to think about dividends is as a small slice of corporate cash flows handed over to us as cash. Eventually, that cash will exceed, on a per-share basis, the amount we paid for the stock in the first place.

Once that happens, everything else is, well, gravy.

I bring this up now because one of our long-time Contrarian Income Report holdings is about to hit this mark.… Read more

500 out of 500.

Do you know what that is? That, amazingly, is the number of stocks in the S&P 500 that the consensus says should be bought or held today. A perfect 500 out of 500.

Wow, so let’s do some “back of the envelope math.” There are 500 stocks in the index. And, let’s see, 500 should be bought or held. Which leaves…let’s see…zero sells.

Zero!

Meanwhile we have unprecedented business model disruption from the massive AI rollout. Biggest thing since the Internet or maybe even the railroads. Fortunes are being minted and vaporized with equal speed right before our very eyes.… Read more