Author Archive: Brett Owens

Right now we’ve got a terrific setup happening in Treasuries—and we’re going to use it to “flip” the near-4% yield the 10-year pays into a gaudy 7.9%+, paid monthly, to boot.

And there’s more: we’re going to give ourselves a rare “double discount” on our bond buys.

We’ll do it by taking already-discounted bonds (thanks to Jay Powell’s Dirty Harry act on rates) and applying a second discount by purchasing through two closed-end funds (CEFs) we’ll talk about in a bit.

The window to use this strategy is now open. Take a look at this chart to see what I’m getting at here:

The 10-Year Rate Bounces Off Its 4% Ceiling (Again)

Over the past 15 years, the yield on the 10-year has zoomed higher plenty of times, until it smacks into the 4% “ceiling.”… Read more

Most vanilla investors like to buy stocks that are well-liked by Wall Street analysts.

This strategy, my contrarian friend, we know is a recipe for disaster.

Why? Well, firms that are already popular with stock jocks have nowhere to go but down. Discarded names, on the other hand, are where the action is because these are the next “analyst upgrade” candidates.

These prices have little downside and lots of upside!

It is difficult to find these out-of-favor plays because most analysts wear rose-colored glasses. They know how their bread gets buttered, and that’s with a bullish outlook.

Which is why a Sell rating is so darned interesting to us.… Read more

“Do you have cherries?” my buddy Ralph asked over the phone.

It was January 2021. Sports bars here in California were closed, so we naturally turned our backyard into one.

“No,” I replied. And sighed in an honest admission. “Only beer. Lots of beer.”

“No problem. I got ‘em.”

My buddy also had a mini-keg of delicious old-fashioneds. His creations were dangerously delicious. He’d begun making and aging fine adult beverages to pass time in the pandemic.

And the maraschino cherries he brought played no small role in his cocktail’s critical acclaim.

Is it five o’clock yet? Just kidding (mostly). We are talking about maraschinos in a dividend column because we finally have some bond funds worth cherry picking.… Read more

All of my indicators are telling me that oil is getting set to rip higher. And when it does, we’re going to be ready with two funds throwing off outsized 9% dividend yields!

How can I be so sure the goo is a coiled spring? Well, for one, the two underrated oil funds we’ll discuss below trade at huge discounts to their “true” value. Right now, we can buy them for less than 90 cents on the dollar.

That gives our oil gains an extra boost. And if oil does break lower from here—something I see as highly unlikely—we’re still getting some nice downside protection, thanks to those very same discounts.… Read more

With a recession likely at some point, we’re going to focus our attention today on recession-resistant dividend stocks.

With all the talk of a “soft landing” or even “no landing”—the nightmare inflation scenario in which the economy keeps humming—we contrarians are going to take a step back. And respect the yield curve.

In a normal economy, longer-dated bonds would pay more than shorter-dated issues. After all, more time, more things that can go wrong. Which is why you and I are smartly prepping for a recession, regardless of what the latest financial narrative is.

The 10-year Treasury bond has paid less than its 2-year cousin for many months and counting.… Read more

Finally, food! The kids had their slices. I had a break in my own conversation. And I was hungry after coaching and refereeing eight periods of second-grade basketball.

I took the opportunity to grab the greasiest slice of Margherita pizza on the tray and folded it like a proper East Coast refugee. And paused.

“Coach Brett?”

“Yeah buddy,” I replied to one of my players, slice still in hand.

“Do you have 40 cents?”

“No, sorry buddy.” I shrugged. And attempted to eat once again.

Then my daughter approached.

“Dad. Do you have 40 cents?”

Forty cents. That was pretty specific.… Read more

Food stocks have been hit hard this year—and we contrarian dividend shoppers can no longer ignore the bargains on offer!

Investors’ overly negative take on these “essential” dividend plays makes zero sense because:

1. They’re partly the result of low fertilizer prices, which can’t last because …
2. The world needs more food: according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, global food demand will soar 70% by 2050, and …
3. Food supply is tight, no thanks to droughts and Putin’s disastrous war (Russia and Ukraine are the world’s No. 3 and No. 10 wheat producers).

The result? Grocery bills that drain our wallets faster than we can fill our carts!… Read more

Real estate is getting thumped, which means real estate investment trusts (REITs) are a bargain once again.

Finally! REIT yields are back to where they ought to be—(land)lording over the vanilla S&P 500:

We contrarians, of course, can do even better than the popular Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ). While 3.5% isn’t bad, it pales in comparison to the 12.7% “headline yield” we’re about to discuss.

Why are REITs cheap again? Simple: The Fed.

As I mentioned months ago, higher interest rates mean not only higher costs of capital for REITs (and all other companies, for that matter), but also more competition for income as bond yields become increasingly competitive.… Read more

These 5.7% and 8.9% dividend payers are ready to rally.

Whether they pop this year or next, we shall see. It’s a matter of when rather than if—which is what we gladly sign up for as income investors.

The broader stock market appears to be on a near-term sugar high. Crypto is going (a bit) crazy and meme stocks (of all things) are back. Count us careful contrarians cautious!

We instead turn our attention to natural gas—a market that has already corrected.

Remember when “natty” prices were supposed to go to the moon this winter? We feared that Europe, without Russian gas imports, would be in for a long cold season.… Read more

Let’s go ahead and grab a slice of AI’s furious growth and get ourselves a nice 6% dividend (paid monthly), too.

Better still, we’re going to get in at an unheard-of 13% discount! Plus we’re going to do it safely—not tying up our cash in profitless tech or miserly blue chips dribbling out paltry 1% to 3% dividends.

Like Buying Microsoft, But With a 6% Dividend (Paid Monthly)

When someone mentions AI, the first stock that that likely pops to mind is Microsoft (MSFT) and its flashy move to integrate the ChatGPT AI into its Bing search engine.

That came straight from the company’s $10-billion investment in OpenAI, ChatGPT’s developer—a move that paid off: Microsoft has its search-engine game back after Bing spent the last decade in the dumpster with ’90s throwbacks like AskJeeves and Yahoo.… Read more