Author Archive: Brett Owens

Return to the office? Heck, we income investors don’t need to return to work—period.

We can turn our nest egg into a cash flow machine, with big dividends to cover our monthly expenses. I’m talking about retiring on dividends alone.

Yes, we’re three buys away from kicking back, collecting payouts and watching our portfolios continue to tick higher. Best of all these dividends have upside, which will power our nest egg to new highs. They serve as the “payout magnets” that pull our investments higher with each dividend raise.

Most importantly, this “three-click” portfolio is well diversified, with 560 different income investments.… Read more

Historically, for whatever reason, stocks have made most of their gains between November 1 and May 1. (Hence the phrase “sell in May and go away.”)

I won’t bore you with the statistical details because they don’t matter for our purposes. Every year is unique, and we treat each as such. But, for our contrarian edge, it is helpful that the onset of fall provokes fear in the hearts of mainstream investors.

The S&P 500 is acting like it’s about to slip off a cliff. It’s been a year since the market’s last meaningful correction. We’re in the fragile half of the year and, seasonally speaking, September and October tend to be particularly weak.… Read more

“Is $1 million enough to retire on?”

Paul Katzeff of Investor’s Business Daily asked me earlier this month. He was especially keen on high-paying ETFs that would throw off enough dividends to fund a nice retirement.

For example, we chatted about the Global X Nasdaq 100 Covered Call ETF (QYLD), which sells covered calls on the Nasdaq index itself to create cash flow.

QYLD’s trailing yield is a sweet 11.8%, which means million-dollar positions would have generated $118,000 in dividend income alone. Plus, the principal grew, too, thanks to price gains. The Nasdaq has been on a tear since last year, helping QYLD to 21.2% total returns (including dividends) over the past twelve months.… Read more

Mainstream investors are stuck with cheesy dividend ETFs paying measly sub-3% yields. But we contrarians can grab ourselves a lot more dividend cash with a “switch” in our portfolio that more than doubles our yield, to 6.6%!

We’ll be fully diversified, too, with bonds, S&P 500 stocks and real estate populating our holdings—703 investments in all. And they’re all hand-picked by expert money managers who evaluate credit and interest rate risk for us.

Plus, this “6.6% retirement solution” has more price upside! The 3 battleship funds we’ll get into below are geared to grind higher as they pay their dividends, no matter what the market does.… Read more

Since traditional banks have backed off on business lending over the years, BDCs (business development companies) have stepped in. They provided much-needed debt, equity, and other financial solutions to small businesses—and much-needed income to dividend investors.

As an asset class, BDCs yield 8%. We’ll discuss three popular payers—with dividends up to 8.3%—in a moment.

Congress whipped up BDCs with a few pen strokes in 1980, creating a structure that’s incentivized to provide smaller companies with financing. BDCs receive special tax privileges, and in exchange, they must return at least 90% of their taxable profits to shareholders as dividends.

If that sounds familiar, that’s because that same tradeoff is enjoyed by real estate investment trusts (REITs), which were formed the same way, 20 years prior.… Read more

I sold this stock for a 4X return. It was a big gaffe.

Fortunately, my amends—a renewed recommendation—helped careful contrarian readers to 22% profits in just over three weeks!

We’ll talk about their haul in a moment. First, let me come clean with my hiccup.

Twenty years ago, when I was young, naïve, and relatively broke, I piled my life savings into Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS). My massive $500 stake netted me about 25 shares.

DKS had recently gone public. I was completely “dialed in” to the offering, having spent much of my youth combing the aisles of the nearby Dick’s Amherst, NY retail location.… Read more

Today I’m going to give you a shot at the next Texas Instruments (TXN), which has delivered a dividend that’s surged 104% since members of my Hidden Yields service bought it in 2017.

Or the next Jefferies Financial Group (JEF), whose dividend has popped 67% higher in the last year alone. 

The key to breakneck payout growth like this is investing in megatrends that reshape society. Right now, we’re tracking six:

• Technology, as it reshapes all our lives in the COVID era.

• Healthcare, as more people pay attention to their health (and more employers entice scarce workers with enhanced medical benefits).

Dividend Aristocrats are popular. Too popular, if you ask me.

I’ll concede that the surest, safest way big stock market gains is dividend growth. Over time, stock prices are literally pulled higher by their payouts. Their dividends act as magnets that pull their shares higher and make their shareholders rich.

The Aristocrats have delivered plenty of wealth. Heck, to be admitted to the club they must have a track record of 25 annual dividend hikes in a row. At minimum.

Which is fantastic past performance. Problem is, the stock market looks ahead.

Many of these stocks are slowing down. Some—such as Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Coca-Cola (KO)—have elevated payout ratios of anywhere between 60% to 90%.… Read more

Contrary to popular opinion, we shouldn’t believe everything we read online. Even simple tasks such as counting dividends are often mishandled by our internet overlords.

Mainstream financial websites such as Yahoo! Finance and Google Finance should know better. Check out the misinformation they are spreading about our beloved PIMCO Dynamic Credit & Mortgage Income Fund (PCI). 

We added PCI to our Contrarian Income Report portfolio five years ago. If you bought PCI then, you’ve enjoyed $12.19 in dividends off an initial entry price of just $18.42. That’s a 66% “cash return” on our investment already!

But the charts provided by Yahoo and Google lost track of these dividends.… Read more

Do yourself a favor and shut out all the “experts” who say it’s impossible to retire on dividends alone. They’re just plain wrong! Because even today, with stocks soaring (and dividend yields in the tank), you absolutely can build a portfolio yielding a solid 7%+.

We’re going to do it now, and we’re going to do it easily—with just three funds. These funds—part of a unique asset class called closed-end funds (CEFs)— pay 7.6% between them, and the biggest yielder of the bunch throws off a huge 8.7% payout!

And they’re just the start.

A 7.6% dividend yield is enough to pay you $38,000 a year on just $500K invested, and you wouldn’t have to draw a single penny of your principal to get that cash stream.… Read more