Author Archive: Brett Owens

Let’s buy the dip on high-growth dividend payers as we head into 2022. Basic investors are fearful, which means it’s time for us contrarians to get greedy.

Thanks to the year-end pullback in stocks, we have an opportunity to double our dividend money even faster than usual. Usually, these moonshot plays aren’t so cheap. But we have a “mini” bear market in small caps and other areas of the market to thank for these bargains.

In a moment we’ll discuss 22 dividend growth stocks that are poised to double in just a few years. These companies have been growing their payouts so fast that, at this pace, they’ll double their payouts in just a few years.… Read more

“Junk” bonds have never paid so little. Which makes them pointless. We’re here for the yields, not the credit quality!

Fortunately we can improve our dividends and our safety by being smarter. We are going to simply sell the popular 4%+ bonds and replace them with better 8%+ yielding equivalents.

First, the dogs. Anyone who owns either of the two most popular high-yield bond ETFs is a sad income investor today. Their yields are at all-time lows. The SPDR Bloomberg Barclays High Yield Bond ETF (JNK), for example, pays only 4.3%:

JNK’s Current Yield is Junk

And it gets worse, because this trailing yield looks better than the year ahead.… Read more

’Tis the season for us contrarian income investors to “bottom fish” the bargain bin for dividend deals. Let’s grab these discounted generous payouts while we can—these are the best weeks of the year to secure 7%+ payouts in 2022 and beyond.

For the next week or two, unloved 7%+ paying closed-end funds (CEFs) will be sold in the spirit of “tax loss” season. Wealthy investors and money managers are looking for 2021 losers to book against recent gains.

And thanks to the epic sector rotation we’re seeing now, the dogs of ’21 are likely to become the darlings of ’22. Fortunately we can buy them cheap—and we can identify these values using a “one-click” CEF valuation tool.… Read more

With 2022 likely to be a wild ride, we income investors are going to lean on two key advantages. In doing so, we’ll secure 7% dividends no matter what the broader markets do.

First, we can secure this “head start” by January 1 by purchasing funds that yield 7%, on average. And these aren’t risky payouts, by the way. I’m talking about secure dividends funded by real cash flows.

And secondly, we can buy them from the bargain bin for just 90 or 95 cents on the dollar! That’s better than most investors, who pay full price (or more!) for their stocks.… Read more

The asset price “fuel” that our Federal Reserve has provided since March 2020 is going away soon. This will likely lead to continued volatility and a challenging backdrop for stocks-at-large.

Periodic “flights to safety” could benefit secure dividend stocks. We’ll touch on the outlook for income plays in a moment. First, let’s talk macro.

The stock market has been rallying for 21 months thanks to the Fed. It has gassed asset prices by buying trillions of dollars in bonds.

(Note: “Bond buying” is a polite way of saying “money printing.” The bonds were using cash that Chairman Jay Powell created out of thin air.)… Read more

Let’s take the hint from the past couple of weeks—2022 looks choppy. And why wouldn’t it? Our prolific money printer Jay Powell has (finally) admitted that inflation is real (not transitory).

His easy money had been floating the market. Now, with Jay reappointed and looking to assuage his Congressional colleagues about rising prices, he’s about to reverse the flow of money. This will likely reverse the rising tide of the market and expose select stocks.

But we dividend investors needn’t panic. With 2022 turning into a stock picker’s market, this is our time to shine. A fragmented market is just fine for us.… Read more

If the past few weeks are any indication of what’s ahead, we’d better buckle up for a volatile 2022.

Which means we should invest in the relative calm provided by monthly dividend stocks before the mainstream crowd starts looking this way. After all, what’s more soothing than thousands of dividend dollars paid every single month?

Monthly dividends are great because they line up with our expenses. Most blue-chip income stocks pay quarterly—not enough! These “lumpy” payouts result in equally lumpy retirement income. For instance, we might have a big January, but that’s followed by an OK February and a lean March where that check alone wouldn’t come close to covering the bills.… Read more

A recent research paper from Morningstar concludes that retirees should only withdraw 3.3% of their money annually. In other words, a million-dollar portfolio should only be relied on for $33,000 in annual income.

That is a sad ending for a seven-figure nest egg!

Scary, too. This $33,000 salary isn’t delivered in cash flow. No, this is a “withdrawal rate”—which means the retiree is tapping principal. Which means the retiree is buying stocks and hoping they’ll go up.

But “hope” is not a strategy. The volatile weeks we’ve seen recently have no doubt forced some terrified retirement investors into selling low.

This is “reverse dollar cost” averaging, unfortunately.… Read more

Jay Powell is finally making noises about kicking his money-printing habit, and we’re going to set ourselves up to profit with an overlooked dividend payer primed to surge in ’22.

(This company isn’t sexy, which is why the herd has ignored it, but it makes a product every food or drink maker must have—and its dividend has tripled in the last five years!)

A couple weeks ago, we talked about investing legend Martin Zweig’s landmark book Winning on Wall Street. In it, Zweig devotes 40 pages to teaching readers why they should “go with the flow” with respect to the Fed’s trend at any given moment.… Read more

Why is logging into a 401(K) such a hassle? It’s a circus when we try to log into my wife’s retirement plan. (Any task that starts with “logging into her company’s VPN” is off to a rough start.)

Most people I know don’t even bother checking these accounts. Which is probably good (and perhaps a big unintentional benefit of this user unfriendliness!). It is tough to beat the “set it and forget it” rhythm of regular retirement contributions, where dollar cost averaging works in our favor.

That’s what I did with my last 401(K). I set it once and forgot about it.… Read more