Author Archive: Michael Foster

Today’s market is ideal for us to grab stock-focused closed-end funds (CEFs) paying outsized 10%+ dividends. Here are three (of many!) reasons why:

• CEFs’ dividend yields are through the roof: As I just mentioned, many equity CEFs pay double-digit yields today. And as members of my CEF Insider service know, most of these sturdy income plays pay dividends monthly.
  

• Deep discounts are everywhere: Of the 447 or so CEFs out there, the average fund trades at a 9.6% discount to net asset value (NAV). That’s near levels we saw in the darkest days of the pandemic! It’s totally overdone, which is why …

• Equity-CEF discounts have upward momentum.

Rarely do we get a buying opportunity in high-yielding closed-end funds (CEFs) like the one we have now. Thanks to the selloff, many CEFs trade at deep discounts and pay outsized yields upwards of 9% today.

With this market rally likely still in its infancy, we still have time to act here. But we don’t want to wait long, as this bounce has already started to whittle away CEFs’ discounts.

I’ve got three perfect funds for us to target below. This trio is intriguing because, taken together, they basically mimic an S&P 500 ETF, but with two key differences:

• They pay a 9.7% average dividend, so you’re getting more of your return in cash than you would if you bought an S&P 500 index fund (which would get you a mere 1.7% payout).

It’s nearly 2023, and we’re on the precipice of something that’s never happened in our lifetimes: a recession is coming—and when it does, it will surprise no one.

Believe it or not, that’s good news because it lets us buy stocks—and high-yield closed-end funds (CEFs)—cheap right now. We don’t have to wait months for the recession to subside.

I’ve got an 8.4%-yielding CEF for you to consider below. It’s discounted twice: once because the stocks it holds, which include S&P 500 standouts like Visa (V), UnitedHealth (UNH) and Amazon.com (AMZN), have sold off, and second because the fund itself trades at a rare discount.… Read more

These three little-known funds yield up to 13.5%—and their payouts are actually safer than they’ve been in years, thanks to the Fed-induced selloff.

Now is the time to buy them. Patient investors who do so will be nicely set up for annualized returns north of 14% in the long run, with most of that gain in dividend cash!

These three timely buys—all closed-end funds (CEFs)—are winners now because they let us buy stocks (and real estate, in the case of one of the funds we’ll discuss below) at a rare double discount: one discount on the CEF itself and another because investors have oversold many of the investments these funds hold.… Read more

A recession is on the way—and stocks are … rallying? It makes zero sense on the surface, but there is good reason for the bounce we’ve seen this week. And we’re going to play it with a 7.3%-paying fund that’s set to roll higher with a recovering market.

No, we’re not talking about an index fund like the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY). My colleague Brett Owens calls SPY “America’s ticker” for good reason: pretty well everyone owns it!

Instead we’re going with a fund that pays us a 7.3% dividend today. That’s more than 4-times SPY’s meager 1.7% payout.… Read more

Members of my CEF Insider service and I always look for big dividends we can collect for the long haul. I’m talking 8%+ payouts here, many of which come our way monthly. (This is possible with CEFs, and these funds’ discounts to net asset value, or NAV, give us some nice upside to go along with those payouts).

By thinking long term, we give our CEFs’ discounts the time they need to close, propelling their share prices higher. (There are exceptions to this, however, such as with covered-call CEFs, which do better when markets are volatile—we tend to swing in and out of these as volatility ebbs and flows.)… Read more

At CEF Insider, we focus on digging up strong 8%+ yielding closed-end funds that are based here in the US. Even our international picks have a solid base in America!

The 2022 mess has vindicated this strategy and helped protect our dividends from the many messes beyond America’s borders, like the collapsing UK economy, continued COVID-19 shutdowns in China and, of course, Russia continuing to prosecute its despicable invasion of Ukraine.

To be sure, America isn’t an island: all these problems have a knock-on effect on our economy, too. Not to mention the Fed, which is raising rates faster than almost any other central bank in the world.… Read more

This selloff has set up a very rare opportunity to bag 12%+ yields in closed-end funds (CEFs). I’ll reveal three names and tickers you’ll want to target now in just a second.

This chance to kickstart a steady 12%+ income stream exists because CEF buyers are a conservative bunch, so these funds’ downdrafts have been amplified this year. (This also means that income-hungry CEF buyers tend to buy back in quickly, driving these funds to fast upside after a drop).

The upshot here is that all 500 or so CEFs in existence are sporting an average discount to net asset value (NAV, or the value of their underlying portfolio) of 7.5%—making them cheaper than they’ve been in nearly a decade.… Read more

I hate to hear about investors using “rules” like the 60/40 portfolio (where you devote 60% of your holdings to stocks and the rest to bonds) to invest their hard-earned cash.

The problem with “rules” like this one is that they lack the ability to adjust to changing markets, like the mess we’ve been living through this year, which has walloped stocks and bonds in equal measure.

Advisors See the Light on Oversimplified “Rules” Like the 60/40 Portfolio

It seems like advisors and the business media are finally accepting this hard truth. Recently, banks like Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan Chase & Co.… Read more

For some folks, it’s almost a reflex to buy gold when inflation hits or volatility ramps up. In times like those, they simply flock to the yellow metal—no questions asked.

But buying gold as a safe haven is a terrible idea, for one simple reason: it doesn’t work.

The dumpster fire year we’re living through now provides an excellent example of gold’s ineffectiveness as an inflation hedge: while inflation soared (it sits at 8.3% as of August), gold has gone the other way, plunging 6.4% since January 1.

That lousy performance isn’t just a one-off. Gold has actually fallen 7% in the last decade.… Read more