Author Archive: Brett Owens

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

Be careful how you buy your bonds. The most popular tickers have four “fatal flaws” that’ll doom you to underperformance at best, or at worst leave you hanging in the event of a market meltdown!

Let’s pick on the widely followed and owned iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) as an example. It has attracted nearly $18 billion in assets because:

1. It’s convenient and as easy to buy as a stock.
2. It’s diversified (for better or worse, as we’ll see shortly) with 1,333 individual holdings.
3. It pays well, at nearly 6% today.

The accessibility of funds like HYG appears cute and comfortable enough.… Read more

Look, we contrarians always welcome a market rally like this one. But it does make our hunt for yield harder.

I mean, the S&P 500’s surge has ground down the index’s average yield to levels not seen since the 1800s!

Right now, the go-to index fund, the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) yields 0.98%. So you’d be pulling in a pathetic $9,800 on a million bucks invested. To get a liveable $50k in income, you’d need to invest $5 million.

Yikes!

Clearly, we need to widen our “strike zone,” and look beyond dividend yield to get the dividend cash we demand.… Read more

We need to talk about four of the cheapest dividend payers on the planet. I’m talking about blue-light bargain valuations and, our favorite, serious high yields!

These four pay from 4.7% to a terrific 12.6%. Yet the Wall Street suits have left them for dead, on the side of the road (or Street, if you will!). Which is fine with us careful contrarians. We’ll sort through the sale rack.

Let’s start with a telecom that stays cheap yet keeps paying us nearly 5% because this divvie perennially finds its way into the suits’ doghouse.

AT&T (T)
Dividend Yield: 4.7%

AT&T (T) is one of telecom’s “Big Three” alongside competitors Verizon (VZ) and T-Mobile US (TMUS).… Read more

You ever buy a stock, watch it go up quickly, feel like a genius…only to watch it top out and take back some of your gains…and then all of them? It’s a—let’s admit it—stupid feeling.

The winner, now a big fat loser. Why didn’t I take the money and run!

“Be patient,” they say. “You’re here for the dividend. The stock will come back.” Well, first, who the heck are they? And second, why should patience be required? It was a fast winner. Now it’s a big fat loser!

Well, my careful contrarian, I ran the numbers earlier this year.… Read more

Kevin Warsh is talking tough on inflation. The bond market is calling BS.

Whenever the Fed and the bond market face off, it pays to remember the words of “Ragin’ Cajun” James Carville:

“I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

Until this fight gets straightened out, we’re in for some turbulence.

We contrarians are here for it. When markets roil, the crowd tosses perfectly good payers over the side.… Read more