Author Archive: Brett Owens

“Hey Brett, how’s business?”

“Awful,” I admitted. “But we’re a startup. If we can improve from awful to simply bad, it will be a big milestone for us.”

That was one economic meltdown ago, back in 2008. I had just left my “day job” to start my first company. On cue, the Great Recession descended upon us.

But the gloomy economic backdrop didn’t matter. Actually, it was a blessing. A recession is actually the best time to start companies and grow them.

As a startup with no money, we were able to cobble our limited resources together to get the company off the ground.… Read more

Why chase the market when we can let 15% per year—every year—come to us?

This is the perfect time to buy what I call “hidden yield” investments. These are stocks that dish out dividends today. But, more notably, they have an important catalyst coming in the year ahead that will help boost their stock prices.

This trigger is so powerful that it sends these stocks sailing by 15% or more per year, every year. Which is truly great when other equities and even bonds are getting buried around us.

We’ll talk about these stocks and their “dividend spark” in a moment.… Read more

“Deglobalization” is the dividend trade of the 2020s. And we’re going to tap it for safe dividend growers with real assets and real cash flow.

I’ll drop two tickers in a second.

Signs that our interconnected world is coming unglued are everywhere. Supply chains are still a mess. Europe is getting set to ban (or slap a price cap on) Russian oil. Speaking of Putin, his immoral invasion of Ukraine is, er, not going well. He’s even going cap in hand to North Korea for spare parts for his ramshackle military!

Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi gazes across the Taiwan Strait, while shuttering his own economy (and vital trading ports) in pursuit of his insane zero-COVID policy.… Read more

Utility stocks—the “OGs of dividend payers”—have sailed through 2022. We’ll highlight seven of them, yielding 4% or more, in a moment.

By the way, this sector-at-large has returned 4%, including dividends, year-to-date (YTD). While that may not make us rich, it is the best record on the scoreboard this side of energy:

Why utilities? As always, these stocks pay and they don’t drop as much in price as the broader market. A useful quality in a dumpster-fire market.

Utilities are expensive, however, They currently trade at nearly 21 times forward earnings—near their highest forward P/E in decades and well above the S&P 500 forward P/E of 17.7.… Read more

Peter is an investing legend. Dude collects $400,000 per year in dividend income.

He retired at age 53, by the way. From the finance industry, naturally. Peter wrote a book and cruised around as a public speaker.

The speaking fees and book royalties were gravy, no doubt. With $33,000 in dividend income coming in each month, I’m sure Peter does not sweat his bills.

Now what can we contrarian income investors learn from master dividend investor “Payout” Peter Thornhill?

Not much.

The guy has an $11 million portfolio. Of course his dividend cash flow is going to rock. It may only be 4%, but that’s more than enough when this is the pile he’s deploying:

A simpler investor can do just as well with a similar war chest.… Read more

We aren’t falling for this “head fake” oil plunge. Instead we’re buying what I like to call the “Biden barrel discount”— grabbing beaten-down oil stocks with surging dividends!

I’ll drop two tickers primed to ride oil’s next bounce higher in a second. First, though, here’s what I mean by the “Biden barrel discount”:

Sure, oil has pulled back on recession worries, but the US has also been releasing crude from its “emergency” supply, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). A cool one-hundred million barrels have been released in the past 12 months.

We’ve been buyers of the energy-price dip because:

1. The SPR release—or our “Biden barrel discount”—can’t  go on forever.

The market’s reaction to Jay Powell’s “hawkish” Jackson Hole rant was interesting. He spoke for eight minutes. Stocks crashed for the rest of the trading session and have continued lower since.

Funny because I didn’t hear anything new. The mid-summer sucker’s rally was based on the hope that Powell would “pivot” early in 2023 and lower rates again.

He can’t unless the economy is really in the tank by then. Like “deep recession” bad. Otherwise, inflation is going to come back.

Larry Summers compared it to skimping on a doctor’s prescription. If you stop taking your antibiotics too soon, the infection comes back.… Read more

Relax. You might already have enough money to retire on.

My favorite dividend stocks let people retire comfortably on $600,000 or so.

Got more cash? Great! You’re in elite company.

Fidelity Investments—apparently happy to share its customer’s financial info anonymously—says it has more than 750,000 seven-figure 401(k) and IRA accounts.

That sounds like a lot, but it means less than 1% of Americans have $1 million or more saved for retirement. And that’s OK—select dividend stocks can help us retire comfortably on $600,000 or less.

Sure, a chunk of money is great. Especially when we can leave it untouched and let it grow.… Read more

There’s a group of dividend stocks out there that are set to skyrocket as the new “Biden buyback tax” rolls in.

These “dividend moonshots” are hiding in plain sight. Most people miss them because they’re looking at the wrong numbers: they’re obsessed with “first level” measures like dividend yields, P/E ratios or whatever.

But we second-level thinkers only need one indicator to find these cash machines, which are poised to profit in a surprising way as the new tax takes effect. I’m talking about a potent number called shareholder yield.

This metric isn’t on any screener, so it takes a couple minutes’ legwork to figure out.… Read more

Let’s not be idiots chasing this bear market rally. OK?

Safe dividend stocks, fine. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. A trio of stability and sanity that doesn’t care if we see a September swoon or October keel over.

Yes, in bear markets like these we sell the rips. But we still buy the dips—we just make sure we do it smartly. And keep it low beta.

Duke Energy (DUK), for example, has a 5-year beta of 0.34. This means it moves only 34% as fast as the market.

In other words, on days when the S&P 500 is down 3%, this stock should decline a mere 1.5% or so.… Read more