Author Archive: Brett Owens

We need to talk about one dividend grower that’s set to win big from this sudden breakout of tariff peace.

It’s an all-American stock that’s “dirt” cheap now. I’m talking about CF Industries (CF), a holding of my Hidden Yields service. CF makes fertilizers and is the world’s largest maker of ammonia, a key ingredient of fertilizer.

How do we know CF is primed to win as China and Uncle Sam take a breather?

We’re quite literally following the money here: CF’s management team is piling in with huge stock buybacks—to the tune of 20% of the company’s “float” over the last three years.… Read more

Is it time to buy the dip on these dividends—which by the way yield between 5.3% and 7.6%?

Yes, the market-at-large has bounced quite a bit. But these payers remain mired in the bargain bin.

Vanilla investors who only focus on the S&P 500 have serious FOMO. They worry that they missed the pullback. The best buying opportunity, at least in terms of the plain “SPY” ETF owned by most of America, lasted only a week or two:

The S&P 500 Dip Didn’t Last Long

But there are still cheap dividend payers that haven’t rallied alongside the popular names. At least not yet.… Read more

The UK trade deal was apparently the tasty egg roll before the main course of lower Chinese tariffs. A delightful order for this dividend grower, ready to feast on the “Peking duck” of trade agreements.

China is one of the biggest buyers of US crops, importing tens of billions of dollars of American agriculture every year. Soybeans and corn meander from Midwest farms all the way across the Pacific to feed China’s large (and growing) livestock industry. Higher US-China tariffs have weighed on US farmers’ profitability—and in turn, on business for key ag suppliers like Corteva Agriscience (CTVA).

So the “trade truce” with China (announced Monday) is quite bullish for Corteva.… Read more

Are we careening towards a recession, or is a pickup in inflation the big threat to the stock market?

The negative first quarter GDP print has recession fears in the financial headlines. Meanwhile, Fed Chair Jay Powell remains fixated on inflation.

Ironically, both may come to pass. Which means we must prepare our portfolios for a slowdown that is quickly followed by a pickup in prices.

Let’s put one smart lender on our “Goldilocks” watch list. This ticker yields 10% today (with some nice “dividend insurance” we’ll talk about in a moment). But the key point is that it profits as inflation—and interest rates—tick higher.… Read more

While vanilla income investors limit their search to mere “common” dividends, we contrarians know where the real payout party is at—with preferred divvies.

Let’s talk about three preferred-stock vehicles that pay from 6.9% to 9.4%. All three of these funds dish monthly dividends.

And these payouts receive preferential treatment over common-stock dividends, making them safer than the common payouts offered by regular ol’ equities.

There are four main ways to buy preferreds, and three of them have some serious headaches and drawbacks:

1. Individual preferred stocks: Research resources for individual preferred shares are few, far between and often require expensive paid subscriptions.

Vanilla investors fixate on price. We contrarians know better.

It’s all about the NAV. Net asset value, baby.

Price is what people pay at a given moment. But people panic. Many like to buy high—and sell low!

NAV, on the other hand, is what something is worth at that same moment. Price and NAV can become disconnected, especially during emotional market moments. When this happens, it is often a buying opportunity for careful contrarians like us.

Let’s take a pop quiz. Think about the funds you hold in your portfolio. What was your top performing NAV for the month of April?… Read more

It’s no secret this economy is slowing—at least in the near term. That’s given us contrarians a (time-limited!) buy window on the “dividend twofer” we’re going to dive into today.

One of the tickers we’ll talk about below pays a sturdy 7% now. The other yields 4.9% and sports a source of upside no one has noticed (except us, of course!).

Both are utility plays, which tend to rise as the economy slows, lowering interest rates as it does. Let’s get into this opportunity, starting with last week’s GDP report, which said, yes, the US economy did shrink to start the year.… Read more

Dividends over drama, please. Like these five steady stocks that yield 7.2%, on average.

Back in school they taught us that to increase returns, investors had to take on additional risk. This was a financial engineering class at Cornell University, by the way. The prof should have known better, but he didn’t, because he was a researcher and not an actual investor.

It’s a common mistake in academia, and those who try to invest “buy the book.” The book says more beta means more returns. Well, this text is often wrong!

Big dividends and low volatility are a beautiful combination.

Volatility can be measured several ways.… Read more

If the April lows hold, the S&P 500 will clock a 19% peak to trough drop on the tariff news. The drawdown could have been worse—if the bond market had not broken!

President Trump was initially resolute in the face of a declining stock market. Wall Street was desperately, unsuccessfully searching for a “Trump Put”—a save from the decline by the White House. Trump, however, likened the levies to a necessary remedy:

“Sometimes you have to take medicine.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, meanwhile, must have silenced his phone for a few weeks while his old Wall Street contacts texted and texted (and called) and texted.… Read more

So far in this trade war, there is one “winner” left on the board: gold. The barbarous relic has glittered amidst the financial carnage.

And while everyone is climbing aboard now, we contrarians see a better buy window ahead. Below, we’ll “dig into” 4 tickers to get ready, ranked from worst to first (hint: our top play has a dividend that soars with gold prices).

Before we get to that, though, let’s look at what’s really going on here—starting with Treasuries. Yields on the 10-year spiked from sub-4% to 4.5% in a matter of days at the height of the trade war tantrum.… Read more