Author Archive: Brett Owens

I recently illustrated the dangers of trusting the Dividend Aristocrats to take care of your retirement needs. Their average yield of 2.4% is a fraction of what you’ll need to retire on dividend income alone, and their payout growth—while long-standing—isn’t rapid enough to get you where you need to be when it’s time to call it a career.

Now here’s another problem with even the highest-yielding Dividend Aristocrats. Stick with me as we solve it and tap into $4,424 in dividend cash each and every month.

Here’s a look at the income schedule for an investor who sinks $100,000 evenly into the five highest-yielding Dividend Aristocrats.… Read more

“Brett, give me some bond funds with big yields. And it’d be great if their prices never went down!”

My money manager friend was chasing the holy grail of retirement income. He wanted safe payouts from bonds to balance his clients’ stock exposure.

“How about the Artisan High Income Investor Fund (ARTFX)?” I replied. “It pays a steady 6% or so. And it never goes down.”

Up, Up, Up With Barely a Blip

“The only problem is that it doesn’t quite have double-digit yearly return potential. And that’s prevented me from recommending it to my Contrarian Income Report subscribers.”

Our CIR portfolio has returned 11.7% per year since inception.… Read more

Forget today’s pathetic Treasury rates. And forget the lousy payout on your typical S&P 500 name, too.

Put your nest egg in either and you’re locking in an income stream that’s actually less than zero for years to come!

I know that sounds crazy—I’ll get into precisely what I mean, and how it could jeopardize your golden years—shortly. Then I’ll show you my two-step dividend strategy (and four specific stocks and funds you can buy now).

Put all four of these picks together and you’ve got a perfect setup for these days of miserly yields, giving you gaudy 6.1%+ payouts today and an incredible 20%+ cash stream in short order!… Read more

Dividend yields are so low today that dividend growth is actually becoming cool. Income investors are combing over “Dividend Aristocrats”–stocks that have raised their payouts for 25 straight years–in desperation to find any meaningful yield.

Problem is, these stocks are so popular and richly valued that they don’t pay much today. Nor will they yield much more tomorrow, even with yearly raises. Our princely picks pay less than 2% today, which is going to net you less than $20,000 on a million bucks.

Dividend Aristocrat Yields Head Towards Zero

The Dividend Aristocrats are the well-worn, oft-recommended dividend growers of the S&P 500.… Read more

Our healthcare landlord Omega Healthcare Investors (OHI) is officially back. This 6% dividend has upside once again. We are about to receive our first payout raise since early 2018, which ends our seven-quarter drought in which the big dividend was paid but not raised.

I say “drought” partially in jest because OHI yielded a fat 10% when it froze its payout. The stock slipped on the news, but we discussed that a freeze isn’t the same as a cut, and OHI’s payout was well covered by its funds from operations (FFO).

Congratulations to you calculated contrarians who stuck with the pick.… Read more

I know you’ve got cash lying around you’d love to double. Heck, even the most buttoned-down investor wouldn’t turn down a quick 2X gain.

So let’s go ahead and double your stake—and do it safely, too.

Before you ask, no, this isn’t some wild pot-stock speculation: my 2X money plan only works on companies paying—and growing—their dividends. Like the stock I’ll show you shortly, which ballooned its payout 50% in less than three years.

The 2X growth plan we’ll dive into shortly hinges on three strategies I rarely reveal in public (but they won’t come as a surprise to my Contrarian Income Report and Hidden Yields members).… Read more

Income investors have been crushed this year. Bond yields are down and stocks pay less and less “dividend per dollar” with each rally. But there’s still one little-known corner of the investing world we can look to for safe yields up to 11.8%.

Business development companies (BDC) provide debt and equity financing for small and midsize businesses. Banks, in recent decades, have deemed these types of lenders “too risky.” So, BDCs put on their big boy risk-evaluating pants and began to provide some powerful payouts that are backed by the cash flows of the firms they lend to.

Double-digit yields are the norm, not the exception, in this extremely niche area of the market.… Read more

Investors have finally pitched a tent above the WeWork circus. Should we REIT (real estate investment trust) shareholders be concerned about a fallout?

The stock was touted in some circles as a potential savior for the office REIT market. As fewer and fewer employees work in traditional workspaces, co-working spots have popped up all over the place in recent years.

Your income strategist knows from experience. Back in 2012 I was a founding tenant for a new tech-focused co-working location here in town. I’m an introvert when I work and found it impossible to take a phone call with everyone yapping in the place.… Read more

I don’t know why you’d mess around with dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPs) when you can “automatically” bag a 7.6%+ income stream and 95% upside with the strategy I’ll show you now.

Better yet, this outsized cash flow drops into your account every month! It takes almost no work. (Just one small, but potent, step, which I’ll show you shortly.)

Before we get to that, let’s look at how easy it is to use this strategy to grab dividends 4X bigger than the sub-2% payouts most folks bring in today.

This simple setup seems a lot like a garden-variety DRIP, but it has one quick “hack” that amps up our dividend and sets us up for fast 95% upside, too.… Read more

You’ve probably heard by now that investing just got a little bit cheaper. Now cheaper isn’t necessarily better, especially for those of us hunting for safe, meaningful yields to fund our retirements.

We’ll get to our diversified 3-click, 7.4%-yielding portfolio (including a couple monthly payers) in a moment. But first, more on the no-commission craze.

Following in the footsteps of Robinhood, Interactive Brokers (IBKR) announced a “Lite” version of its platform with commission-free stocks and ETFs. Then Charles Schwab (SCHW) announced it would offer commission-free stock, ETF and options trading, with TD Ameritrade (AMTD) and E*Trade (ETFC) in tow.

Online brokerages have been pushing selects sets of commission-free ETFs for some time.… Read more