Author Archive: Michael Foster

At my CEF Insider service, we focus on the long term, picking up closed-end funds that give us the capital we need to grow our wealth, plus the high income (I’m talking 8%+ yields here) we need to gain—and keep!—our financial freedom.

That said, there’s no denying that one particular investment (that’s known for neither income nor long-term wealth building!) is getting a lot of attention these days: gold.

So let’s talk about the yellow metal and why we’ve avoided it at CEF Insider, despite its recent rise. We’ll also look at a closed-end fund (CEF) that looks like a good play on gold but is, in fact, far from it.… Read more

Sometimes there’s a dividend play out there that we love—but it’s just the wrong time to buy it.

That’s the story with an 11.6%-paying closed-end fund (CEF) that’s pretty well-known (for a CEF, that is!). It’s the Gabelli Equity Trust (GAB), run by Mario Gabelli, whom you may have seen on the cable news channels over the years.

To get at why we’re dodging this well-run fund now, we need to first talk about a phrase you may have heard a lot more from said business channels lately: “soft data.”

Ring a bell? Basically it refers to numbers that are more about feelings (or “vibes” as the kids call them these days) that people have about the economy: surveys of consumers and companies, expectations of economic conditions in the future, that sort of thing.… Read more

It’s as predictable as night following day: Stock markets crash, and we almost immediately hear more about the so-called “60/40 rule” as a way for investors to protect themselves.

Don’t fall for this overdone “rule of thumb” (which, as the name says, recommends putting 60% of your portfolio into stocks and 40% into bonds).

Today we’re going to look at a much better way—one that pays you 9.7% dividends and delivers far better performance, too.

2025 Is 2022 Redux for the 60/40 Crowd

Today’s setup reminds me of what I heard near the end of 2022, when stocks were crashing. Back then, many advisors were dredging up this old idea to help ease worried investors’ fears.… Read more

On one front, this tariff pandemonium changes nothing for us: We still see our favorite high-yield investments—8%+ paying closed-end funds (CEFs)—as the best choice to anchor your retirement portfolio.

In fact, times like this add to their appeal even more.

That’s because, in a crash, we CEF investors don’t have to sell a single unit of our funds to get the cash we need to fund our lives. Our big dividends—many of which roll in monthly—take care of our needs for us.

Then there’s CEFs’ discounts to net asset value (NAV, or the value of their underlying portfolios). This unique-to-CEF measure tells us when a fund is cheap or pricey.… Read more

In the run-up to the reversal of many of President Trump’s tariffs, we saw some true panic selling that turned into what can only be called panic buying: Investors eager to get back in as they realized the selloff was a buying opportunity.

And to no one’s surprise, tariff-related market drama has continued since then.

Last Wednesday’s bounce happened so fast I couldn’t get my response to the selloff published in time. Earlier last week I wrote, “Fortunately, this situation will not last forever. Stocks will ultimately recover their losses from this last week.” Then stocks did recover before those words could get published!… Read more

The pullback we’ve seen in the last week calls to mind the last big selloff we saw—in 2022.

That’s what I want to draw your attention to today (but only for a moment!). Because the 2022 experience still has a lot to tell us about how markets really view the possibility of a recession. Along with that, a quick look back can also help us develop our strategy for investing in 8%+ yielding closed-end funds (CEFs) from here.

Back then, the fear was that a combination of inflation and recession would cause stocks to plunge. And plunge they did. In fact, the market gave up on everything.… Read more

I often talk about high-yielding closed-end funds (CEFs) that are great buys because, well, there are plenty of CEFs that are. Yes, even in unprecedented times like these!

That’s because the best CEFs offer three things we love:

• Big dividends, with an average yield of 7.8% across the asset class.

• Bargain valuations, with average discounts to net asset value (NAV, or the value of a CEF’s underlying portfolio) of 5%.
  
  And how’s this for a stat …

• Proven performance, with 94% of CEFs posting positive returns (with dividends reinvested) over the last decade. Ninety. Four. Percent.

Still, every once in a while, a CEF comes across my desk that’s an obvious one to sell (or avoid if you don’t already hold it).… Read more

Most indicators are misleading investors right now, with some looking rosy and others seemingly saying it’s time to panic.

So today we’re going to parse through the noise and look at what’s really going on under the hood of the US economy.

Then I’m going to give you our latest “CEF Insider intel” on what to do with stocks—and funds (specifically closed-end funds) that hold them. We’re also going to dig into one bond fund yielding an outsized 13% that’s set to benefit as uncertainty grows.

Investor “Mood Ring” Says It’s Time to Panic …

Consider the CNN Fear & Greed index, a closely watched sentiment indicator.… Read more

In our Thursday article, we talked about a “quiet shift” in the markets, from growth stocks to value—and we named 2 CEFs yielding 9%+ that are primed to profit from it.

Yes, the recent jump in volatility is a big reason for that. So today, we’re going to look at another side of the rotation we’re seeing—a shift from passive investing to active.

Index Funds Are so 2023

As we move further into 2025, it’s getting clearer to me that we’re into a stock-picker’s market. Sitting in an index fund just won’t cut it.

That said, at my CEF Insider service, we’re still bullish on stocks (and stock-focused closed-end funds, many of which hand us 8%+ yields), and we’ll get into two stock-focused funds, along with another that holds preferred stocks—kind of a stock/bond hybrid—below.… Read more

Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a quiet trend in investing—and today we’re going to tap into it with two funds yielding near 10%.

That’s right: enough to pay you back just shy of 10% of your initial buy a year in dividends alone.

What’s more, these two income plays—closed-end funds (CEFs), to be precise—have been around for nearly a century, with one dating from 1927 and the other having launched in 1929. That last date, of course, is notorious, as it heralded the start of the worst market crash in history.

I bring these two CEFs up now because their long institutional memory gives them a level of reliability that few other funds can match.… Read more