Author Archive: Brett Owens

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

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