Author Archive: Michael Foster

If you’re like me, you’re getting sick of this tug-of-war between inflation and recession worries. One steals our purchasing power, while the other knocks down our portfolio values!

But I’ve got good news for you—two pieces of good news, actually.

1. Our closed-end funds (CEFs) continue to deliver high, and reliable, income. The portfolio of my CEF Insider service boasts many funds yielding north of 8%, and the vast majority pay dividends monthly. Those high yields help us hedge against inflation, and the extra dividend cash (should we let it build up in our portfolios) naturally reduces our volatility.
2. Recession fears are overblown, according to the latest data (which we’ll get to in a bit).

Crypto is a mess, and many (former) crypto fans are finally realizing that shares of companies that make goods and services people actually want—and pay dividends—are the place to be.

Of course, that’s no secret to those of us who know about closed-end funds (CEFs), many of which hold these companies and pay us rich dividends, often yielding north of 7%. To us, crypto is just the latest “investment” that held out the promise of building wealth faster than “boring” stocks ever could—and failed to deliver.

You might have even heard that crypto is a great inflation hedge. Anyone who bought Bitcoin based on that idea is now struggling with 71%+ inflation as their money literally disappears before their eyes!… Read more

After a 30% drop this year, tech is the last sector most folks want to invest in—which makes it a superb hunting ground for us contrarian dividend investors.

Even so, we need to be careful in this Fed-spooked environment, where near-term volatility is certain, so we’re going to hedge our tech investments by focusing on a type of closed-end fund (CEF) that gives us the following:

• An outsized 8%+ dividend that can see us through rough markets without having to sell shares, and …

• The ability to actually profit when markets get rough.

We get both of these rare strengths in the Nuveen Nasdaq 100 Dynamic Overwrite Fund (QQQX), a CEF whose vitals we’ll delve into in a bit.… Read more

Demand for rental property is literally going through the roof—and we can play the trend for a rock-solid 7% dividend that can be had at a discount!

What’s driving this opportunity? Higher interest rates. As you can see below, the average 30-year mortgage issued today bears an interest rate near 5%, a level we haven’t come close to since the subprime-mortgage crisis.

Mortgage Rates Soar

The trend is so aggressive that it’s getting analysts and journalists into full-blown panic mode, as they begin to report on what I call “seller’s remorse.”

Seeing how rates are soaring and home values are hitting a bump, sellers are already reducing their asking prices and looking to offload property as fast as possible.… Read more

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s been a flurry of doom-and-gloom articles making the rounds that all preach the same thing: anyone looking to retire now faces a bleak time of it indeed.

To that I say: nonsense! Below I’ll show you three closed-end funds (CEFs) whose yields are so high right now (up to 11.2%) that buying them and living off their rich payouts has rarely been this attractive.

We’ll talk more about these three funds, and the many benefits CEFs offer retirees, shortly. First, let’s talk about the “retirement alarmism” we’re seeing in the media today. Because these articles (all driven by the fact that fearsome headlines get clicks) suggest that a mix of high inflation and still-high stock valuations will result in retirees facing much lower “safe withdrawal rates,” or SWRs.… Read more

Thanks to the selloff, it’s possible to buy closed-end funds (CEFs) at such high yields that we can do what seemed unthinkable just a few months ago: build a CEF portfolio that will pay $5,000 a month in dividends on about $540k invested.

That’s an 11.1% average yield!

This, of course, is because many CEFs have been caught up in the selloff, and yields move inversely to prices. So a fund that may have yielded, say, 7% six months ago (which is about the long-term CEF average) is suddenly yielding a lot more now.

In addition, it’s possible to build an income stream this big with just three CEFs.… Read more

While the pundits continue to (unsuccessfully) try to call the bottom of this Fed-spooked market, we CEF investors are doing what we always do: collecting our 7%+ dividends as we patiently move through to brighter days.

In fact, we’re doing more than that: we’re making some careful long-term buys as our fellow CEF investors—a conservative lot if there ever was one—toss out funds that are actually well suited to the higher-rate world we’re moving into.

I want to talk about one such fund today: it does something that has a lot of appeal in a market like this—it keeps you invested in the S&P 500, but with a twist: it hands you an outsized income stream that actually grows more stable as volatility picks up.… Read more

Look, I know this inflation-panicked market is frustrating. But despite the endless doomsaying from the pundits, there is good news: if you’re investing for income and have a long time horizon, there are some big dividends (I’m talking 10%+ yields) waiting for us in closed-end funds (CEFs).

In a second, we’re going to dive into three such funds I’ve assembled into a low-drama “mini-portfolio” yielding north of 10%.

We can thank the selloff for this opportunity: when stock (and CEF) prices go down, yields go up. And our CEFs discounts to net asset value (NAV, or the per-share value of a CEF’s portfolio) fall to bargain levels.… Read more

As difficult as this selloff has been for all of us, it has left some attractive (and discounted) dividends on the board, especially in high-yield closed-end funds (CEFs).

I know it’s tough to buy in a market like this, but the dividends we’re going to talk about today actually benefit from rising inflation, posting higher and higher cash flows as the CPI shoots higher and higher, too.

These are the companies we want to be in now, both to collect their high dividends through today’s tire fire and to profit when the market waters (inevitably) calm and investors finally take notice of these stocks’ sturdy cash flows.… Read more

There’s a glaring disconnect out there between the health of the economy (still strong) and the mood of investors (terrible). It’s opened a window for us to grab some solid closed-end funds (CEFs) throwing off yields of 8%+.

This is especially true if you’re investing for the long term, which, if you are investing for income like this, you should be.

We’re going to talk about three such high-income plays today (one of which offers an 11.5% payout that’s growing) and dive just a little deeper into why this opening exists for us.

Fast Growth + Worried Investors = Best Time to Buy CEFs

If you’re a bit nervous about investing right now, I get it.… Read more