Author Archive: Brett Owens

Here are eleven highly rated charities that benefit Ukrainians. Our extra dividend dollars can go a long way towards helping the millions of people who are suffering as a result of the Russian invasion.

All eleven nonprofits have a four-star rating from CharityNavigator.org, an independent service that rates charities for their financial efficiency and their transparency.

From there, I (Brett) cherry picked the very top candidates based on their individual Financial and Accountability & Transparency rating from CN. I have donated to each of these charities myself. Here they are in alphabetical order.

• A Chance in Life is preparing to help the 900,000 Ukrainian refugees (mostly women and children) that are expected to flee to Italy.

Friday morning, I mentioned to my wife that it was time for us to log into her 401(k) and move it back into stocks.

“Funny,” she said. “On NPR they just mentioned that money managers are moving into cash.”

If that isn’t a contrarian confirmation that a short-term low may be in, I don’t know what is!

Aside from the scaredy cats running money, there is also a misinformation campaign floating around about closed-end funds (CEFs). Since these vehicles are a favorite source of 7%+ dividends for us, we’re going to bust apart these lame claims today.

Then we’re going to roll into two CEFs that are savvy buys now, as Jay Powell starts cleaning up the inflationary mess he made by leaving the switch on his money printer stuck in “high.”… Read more

What’s better than an asset class that can deliver 8% in annual income like clockwork? How about one that’s actually poised to pop as interest rates rise?

And oh by the way, this industry lets us invest like privileged private equity investors. No “seven-digit” buy-in needed here though! We buy these dividend machines just like we would any other stock.

That might sound too good to be true, especially when we consider that stocks broadly still yield less than 2%. But we’re simply talking about an underappreciated area of the market that includes only a few dozen stocks or so.

Let’s talk about three of these payout powerhouses today.… Read more

“This wine is crap.”

My wife (girlfriend at the time) glared back. I couldn’t let it go.

“Seriously…we paid $50 for this? I’d rather drink a bottle of Niagara.”

My comment—and ode to the New York wine that tastes like Welch’s grape juice—didn’t help the glare.

I was 22 years old, making $50K per year. It wasn’t a bad starting salary back in the day, but I didn’t have many extra $50s to spend on a Napa Valley wine tasting.

Plus, this guy had been drinking cheap Canadian beer since he was 16! The thought that I could procure 100 Labatt Blues for the price of our tasting raised my temperature further.… Read more

Dividend stocks reward us with more than just cash flow. They actually benefit our retirement portfolios in four ways:

• A high current yield—for meaningful cash flow today. In a moment we’ll spotlight a timely play with a neat 3.5% yield.

• Dividend growth, which tends to pull a company’s share price higher (as we’ll see below with this stock, whose payout exploded 450% in the last decade).
  

• Share buybacks, which cut the number of shares outstanding, boosting earnings per share and share prices in the process. And of course …

• Price appreciation, as the stock moves up on strong results for the company, its industry or the economy as a whole.

Russia’s reckless (and, sadly, increasingly ruthless) invasion of Ukraine has put a spotlight squarely on the commodity markets. Many of them have already taken off to the moon. Crude oil, of course, was the first to hit orbit.

But there’s one hard asset that’s still flying under the radar—at least for now. And this commodity just so happens to be a source of aggressive dividend growth.

Oil, as mentioned, is most of the media’s attention. Not only has “black gold” set the investing world on fire, with the highest crude-oil prices seen in more than 13 years—but Americans are forced to watch that filter down into all-time-high gas prices.… Read more

“Mom, please make sure you secure your mask first before assisting the kiddos.”

We receive this reminder every flight from at least one flight attendant. Mom receives the reminder while your income strategist sits across the aisle (a mile away as far as his parenting partner is concerned) in an uneventful seat dubbed Daddy Island.

This, of course, runs counter to Mom’s (and even Dad’s) instinct. If your kid is in trouble, your first, second and third reaction is to help your child first. The airline’s point is that we can best help our children by first securing our own oxygen.… Read more

When a market storm hits, we dividend investors can protect our wealth and grab steady payouts when we buy stocks backed by strong recurring revenue.

It’s one of the oldest business models there is! Here’s how it works: customers pay for the services these companies provide every month, year or whatever, which gives them predictable—and ideally growing—profits.

What’s more, these payments are “sticky”: once buyers start making them, they’re quickly “out of sight, out of mind,” automatically pulling from their bank accounts (or dropping onto their credit cards) on the regular.

(I’ll show you two such firms in a moment, one of which is converting its recurring revenue into a recurring payout that soared 88% in just two  years.… Read more

Over longer time periods, dividend stock prices tend to follow their dividends—for better or for worse.

Sometimes, the stock price gets there first. This can be a race to the sky, in the case of a rising dividend. Or a race to the basement, when a payout is about to be cut.

For example, we had been concerned about Kraft Heinz’s (KHC) dividend for years. Income investors “sniffed out” the inevitable payout cut before the lower quarterly dish became official:

Kraft’s Stock Price Tipped Off Its Dividend Cut

Investors waste no time ditching a troubled dividend when a firm has hacked its payout in the past.… Read more

We’ll talk about protecting our retirement portfolios—and finding safe dividend stocks—in a moment. But first, let’s appreciate the Ukrainian woman who offered sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers in her neighborhood.

You’re occupants.
You’re fascists.
Take these seeds and put them in your pocket
So at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here.

She gave the soldiers a full minute of nonstop verbal barrage. You can watch it with captions here.

Warning, her language is not safe for work—which makes the interaction all the more special. (Hat tip to Ukraine’s Twitter feed for the post. Their government has put on a master class in social media marketing over the past week.)… Read more