Author Archive: Brett Owens

Like many wise money quotes, nobody is quite sure who originally said:

     “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

It’s frequently credited to economist John Maynard Keynes. A popular story goes that Keynes changed his mind on a financial issue, was criticized for his “flip flop”—and then delivered the zinger.

QuoteInvestigator.com researched the quip and concluded that Keynes never actually said it. (Keep that bit of market trivia in your back pocket.)

Regardless, the facts have changed on big oil dividends. On September 9, 2015, I warned readers that Big Oil was a “Big Dividend Trap.”… Read more

What the heck would a jump in inflation mean for our dividends? I’m getting that question from readers a lot these days, so today we’re going to take a closer look.

Then we’ll dive into three sectors—and three dividend payers (including one yielding an eye-popping 10%)—you’ll want to put on your radar now.

All three of these stocks boast high yields and/or strong dividend growth, plus big upside potential. Taken together, I expect their total returns to easily outrun any rise in inflation—and interest rates—we’ll likely see.

Money Printer Revs Up

The argument that we’re heading for a jump in inflation is pretty clear—a few days back, we saw the consumer price index (CPI), the go-to measure of inflation, pop 2.6% in March from a year ago, way more than expected.… Read more

It’s a no-yield world we dividend investors are living in. But believe it or not, there are some payers with serious yields that get zero mainstream attention. We’ll discuss five in a moment.

I’m talking about dividends between 9.5% and 13.6%! Yes, you read that right—one of these stocks dished 13.6% back to its happy income investors over the past twelve months.

Are these yields safe? That is always the question. The backdrop is certainly better than last year. One year ago, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 triggered a slew of dividend cuts and suspensions as companies scrambled to preserve cash and remain solvent through the uncertain future.… Read more

Start rounding up your spare cash, because the best dividend buying opportunity—since last October—is coming soon.

Last week, we chatted about stacking dry powder for a special purchasing moment. For those of you who have been piling up the payouts into a cash mountain, let’s get ready to deploy it.

Why does this matter? Well, buying moments like these can secure us several years’ worth of returns at once. Let’s revisit the October example, which Contrarian Income Report subscribers will remember fondly.

At the time, we had two months of pullback behind us. Scary headlines had driven fear to levels that should be bought, and that is exactly what we contrarians did.… Read more

Stocks are floating higher daily—and I’m hearing from a lot of readers wondering when they should sell a winning income pick, and when they should let it run.

You’re probably sitting on some nice capital gains these days, too, and have been asking yourself the same question.

So today I’m going to give you the three-step indicator I use when making buy/sell decisions for my Hidden Yields dividend-growth advisory. It’s a simple “traffic light” setup, with green being buy, yellow telling us to watch a stock we own closely and finally red, when we sell and take profits.

Green: When the Dividend Outruns the Share Price, We Buy

If you’re a regular reader of my columns on Contrarian Outlook, what I’m about to say won’t surprise you: dividend growth is the No.… Read more

The market isn’t doing fixed-income investors any favors right now. But one of my favorite funds—in one of the best cash flow niches in the market—is delivering a gaudy 6.6% yield at today’s prices.

And it does that by holding some of Wall Street’s most boring, stable and dependable securities.

How can we bank this 6.6% “free lunch” when 10-year Treasuries still pay less than 2%? By tapping into an income stream that most individual investors rarely think about: Preferreds.

The Power of Preferreds

If we wanted to own a piece of a company, say JPMorgan Chase (JPM), we’d go out and buy a few shares of JPM.… Read more

If you’re a regular reader, I owe you a big congratulations on the recent profits in your dividend portfolio.

Some of you are banking big yields. Others are riding dividend magnets to capital gains. A select group of savvy contrarians are profiting from payouts and price upside.

The result of your mini windfall, regardless of source, is cash. But this pile of money is not yet generating any income for us. So, what is the best way to employ these greenbacks? We have three options:

1. Reinvest the dividend money automatically via DRIPs,
2. Deploy the profits strategically via smart shopping lists, or
3. Stack the dry powder for a special moment.

Let me start with a special shout out to our dedicated readers at Barron’s. Here at Contrarian Outlook, we’ve been drawing up the playbook to retire on dividends for years (Two years ago, we literally wrote the book on the retirement strategy.)

So it was a hoot to see Barron’s run a cover story about retiring on dividends. But I have a bit of constructive criticism about the piece: the dividend stocks highlighted in the feature article had yields too low to actually retire on.

The magazine’s 10 buys included Coca-Cola (KO), International Business Machines (IBM) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and had an average current yield of 4.1% between them (as of the time the piece was written).… Read more

It is challenging to find stocks that pay enough money to retire on. For example, even a 3.3% dividend—generous by today’s standards—isn’t enough to turn a $1,000,000 into an income stream that will last forever.

I’ll save you the math. It’s just $33,000 per year on a million dollars.

Fortunately, this same dividend yield is understated on most mainstream financial websites. In reality, this stock paid 7.7% over the past twelve months. Which means its millionaire investors actually earned $77,000 in dividend income.

Yes, you read that right. There was an extra $44,000 hidden in plain sight thanks to a “special” dividend payment.… Read more

Thank you to our 1,578 Contrarian Income Report subscribers who attended our Q1 webcast a couple of weeks back!

We have you, our thoughtful reader and income investor, to thank for the inspiration behind the firehose. We received 114 questions during our one-hour call, plus several more beforehand. Amazing.

As promised, I have read each and every question (as has our excellent customer service team). Last week, we chatted about CEFs. Let’s tackle some dividend stock questions today.

Q: I love your overall dividend approach. I have some cash on the sideline expecting a correction. Any thoughts on the timing and percentage dip of that correction?… Read more