Author Archive: Brett Owens

“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.”

Same S&P Yearly Return, Less Heartburn

“The only problem is that it never goes up, either. And that’s prevented me from recommending it to my Contrarian Income Report subscribers.”

Our CIR portfolio holds eight bond funds today (versus ten stocks and stock funds).… Read more

Will interest rates really get the chop everyone thinks they will as 2019 rolls into the home stretch?

The smart money certainly thinks it knows. Beyond the July 31 rate cut (which the pros see as all but in the can), futures traders predict two more chops—in September and December:

But here’s something no one will tell you: not a single person outside of Jerome Powell has any clue what the Fed will do next.

Not futures traders. Not your adviser. Certainly not the talking heads on CNBC.

That’s why we’re going to dive into three “forever” stocks that beat the market no matter what rates do.… Read more

You and I know why people buy real estate investment trusts (REITs). They’re income machines that are literally mandated to take the lion’s share of their profits and put them back into shareholders’ hands as cash dividends.

It’s no secret. Just about anyone who buys into REITs know that they produce far bigger dividends than your typical stock.

But put most people in front of a Yahoo! Finance or Google Finance stock chart, and they’re suddenly struck by selective amnesia. Because they forget that these charts only consider price gains and don’t include REITs’ outsized dividends.

Let’s look at some of the optical delusions investors find when they stumble across the charts–then look at what happens once you split out price and total returns (with dividends).… Read more

Last time we had a July like this, REITs (real estate investment trusts) ran wild. The top plays delivered dividends plus price gains between 40% and 114%!

REIT Rhyme for 114% Returns?

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

• It was July,
• The stock market was hitting all-time highs,
• And the Fed was about to cut rates for the first time in a while.

We shall see if July 2019 continues to “rhyme” with July 1995. Back then, we had Fed Chair Alan Greenspan introduce the concept of the “Greenspan Put,” the inside joke that the Maestro would save any decline in stocks with rate cuts.… Read more

I have no idea why you’d mess around with dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPs) when you can “automatically” bag a 7%+ income stream and 82%+ upside with the strategy I’ll show you now.

Better yet, this outsized cash flow drops into your account—and grows—every single 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 just how easy it is to use this proven strategy to double up—and even triple up—the cash stream your portfolio is throwing off today.

This simple system looks like a garden-variety DRIP, but it has one simple “hack” that amps up our dividend and sets us up for fast 82%+ upside, too.… Read more

Not yet as rich as you always wanted to be? Don’t worry, because today we’re going to dial you in for some “rich guy” dividend favorites that’ll pay you up to 9.9% every year.

Private equity is a lucrative and secretive world. It’s often limited to accredited investors, which means these funds require you to have $200,000 or more in annual income to qualify.

If you’re living on dividends alone, this might be challenging. Fortunately, there are some private equity plays that you can buy just like individual stocks. They trade for as cheap as $12 per share and they’ll pay you dividends from 8.8% to 9.9% along the way:

Private equity (PE)—funds that can invest in the equity and debt of privately held companies, which we typically can’t get our hands on—is generally touted as outperforming the stock market.… Read more

If this were any “normal” time, we’d be able to buy safe bonds and collect enough income on our nest egg to fund our retirements. Unfortunately, this is the “new normal” where the Fed is not the friend of us current and hopeful retirees!

Jay Powell is afraid for his job, which means he’s going to cut rates and keep them low for a long time. This means we must look beyond traditional bonds for meaningful income.

What about blue chip dividend-paying stocks? Well, an 11-year stock market rally has ruined that idea. Anyone putting new money in a pricey dividend aristocrat is “buying and hoping” that the stock continues to levitate while the firm dishes its dividend.… Read more

Make no mistake: Jerome Powell’s pain is our chance to set ourselves up for 7%+ dividends, along with serious upside—I’m talking total returns well into the triple digits!

The key? The two stealth dividend-growth picks I have for you today. More on those shortly.

First off, you have to feel sorry for the Fed chief. Not only is he taking a whipping from the president’s Twitter feed for not cutting rates sooner, now he’s being second-guessed for considering a cut at all, given June’s blowout jobs report.

It’s a wonder the poor man doesn’t lock his office door, barricade it with his chair and refuse to come out!… Read more

What’s better than a portfolio that will pay you a $117,000 salary every year in retirement?

How about one that delivers a consistent paycheck each and every month that you can plan all of your regular expenses around?

I’ll show you how, via with three already-diversified high-yield monthly dividend stocks. But first, let me show you how most income investors get it wrong.

Mistake 1: Cheating Themselves on Yield

Sure, yield isn’t everything—you want growth potential, dividend growth potential and safety, too—but it matters. Consider this: Every 1% in yield equates to $10,000 on a $1 million nest egg. Thus, 2% is $20,000, 3% is $30,000, and so forth.… Read more

Successful dividend investing is simple, though not necessarily easy. There are nuances which trip up many investors (including most professionals!) These twists and turns create “yield alpha” opportunities for contrarian-minded income investors like us.

If everyone else in the market were perfectly grounded and calculated, there would be no chance for us to make above-average returns. After all, the 11.3% and 17.5% annualized returns that my Contrarian Income Report and Hidden Yields readers are earning would be snapped up in a perfectly efficient market.

Thanks to these inefficiencies, we are able to bank big yields and price returns in Dividend Land.… Read more