Author Archive: Brett Owens

Two dividend cuts in the last two quarters, and we are buying.

Wait. What?

When do we ever chase one dividend cut, let alone two? Let me tell you when, my fellow contrarian!

A Terrible Divvie Trend and We’re In?

Let’s start with the fantastic yield. At 15.3%, FS KKR Capital Corp (FSK) has our attention. That doesn’t mean buy—we don’t chase headline yields around here without doing our homework. But in this case, management is redirecting the money saved from these cuts into share buybacks. 

Which means we’ll likely see price appreciation as shares move closer to fair value.… Read more

Last week’s hot inflation reports have handed us a timely “two-step” 10.3% dividend opportunity. We’re going to jump on it today.

Here’s our plan:

• Step 1: We grab a 10.3% average dividend now, to fend off rising inflation, then …
• Step 2: We ride along as interest rates fall, driving up the value of the two funds behind that steady 10.3% divvie.

I know, I know. How can I be talking about falling rates at a time like this?

The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Oil is at $100. And last week saw two hot inflation reports: CPI hit 3.8% in April, and the PPI (producer price index) soared 6%.… Read more

Let’s capitalize on analyst incompetence—and bank yields up to 18.3%, with upside to boot!

A widely cited academic study on analyst target price accuracy found that only about 54% of 12-month price targets correctly predicted even the direction of the subsequent price move.

Fifty-four percent. On direction alone. That’s barely better than a coin flip!

Analysts give specific price targets to stocks like they are scripture. In reality, they don’t even know if the thing is going to move up or down.

And it gets uglier. A 2024 Yale School of Management study found that analysts systematically delay downgrading stocks after bad news—to curry favor with the companies they cover.… Read more

“Merci beaucoup,” your dividend strategist said as he handed three suitcases to his to-the-Paris-airport Uber driver. (I was very proud of myself. Eight days and basically Parisian…)

“Francais?” the driver called my bluff.

“Ah no,” I admitted, hands up, waving off the offer. “She does!” I quickly scapegoated my wife. Who, to her credit, speaks French reasonably well. But the driver was flying with his urgent ask.

Fortunately for phones. She didn’t know what he was asking either, but his phone was translating into English in real time:

There is a bug in my application. Can we cancel the ride?

Then he punched a number into a calculator.… Read more

Stocks are surging—but they’re also developing a case of “bad breadth.” That is, most of the gains are coming from a small slice of the market (I’m looking at you, tech).

That’s good news for us contrarians because this shift has left us some sweet dividend deals in other corners of the market. We’re going to capitalize through 3 discounted closed-end funds (CEFs) yielding up to 11.8%.

Together, they form a tidy “mini-portfolio” that includes blue chips (sans tech), bonds and infrastructure plays. Two of these funds offer payouts that roll out monthly, too.

Start With Stocks—and the Gabelli Equity Trust (GAB)

GAB stands out for another reason beyond its hefty 10.6% payout: It’s one of the few US-stock-focused CEFs whose top-10 holdings aren’t heavily weighted toward tech.… Read more

All-time highs are usually the wrong place to shop for stocks. Prices climb, yields drop, and the only deals left are in junk that nobody wants for good reason.

Right now, though, we have seven cheap, high-yielding dividend stocks available in an otherwise rich market. And these blue-light specials pay. I’m talking about seven dividends yielding 5.2% to 10.3% as I write.

Let’s start with automaker Ford (F, 5.2% yield), an American automotive pioneer and its F-Series has been the country’s best-selling truck for more than four decades. It’s also a perpetually cheap stock, almost always trading at a fraction of the consumer discretionary sector’s average P/E.… Read more

We’ve been dividend-hungry lately. Our Wednesday missives have brought 11 great income ideas in recent months!

It’s a busy week for our brood! If you bought these payers, you have three ex-dividend dates (the dates when the stock trades at a price minus—“ex”—the dividend per share) on deck this week. Plus a nice pay day!

Income Calendar for This Week

This neat weekly view comes to us courtesy of Income Calendar, our homegrown dividend tracker. We developed IC for serious income investors like yourself. The tool projects every dividend payment with accuracy that is unmatched in the industry.

This calendar beats today’s best AI—it’s custom-made and precision-tuned for dividend stocks.… Read more

Visa (V) is truly the Rocky Balboa of dividend stocks.

I know. I’m dating myself with that reference. But I can’t help it: Every time Visa takes a beating—and the mainstream crowd counts it out—it comes roaring back.

Take a look at this long-term chart. Every single dip was a buying opportunity—including this latest one:

Visa Gets Clobbered and Gets Back Up. Every Time

Its latest bounce—a 9% roll higher (see the right side of the chart above) during trading on April 29—came just last week, when the company reported earnings. But despite that rise, we haven’t missed our shot here.… 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

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