Author Archive: Michael Foster

Think about it for a moment: when was the last time you read anything about closed-end funds (CEFs), a way too often overlooked asset class that throws off 7%+ average dividends?

Never? Maybe once?

It’s a shame that CEFs are rarely discussed outside Wall Street circles, because they’re perfect for anyone who needs income these days. (And who doesn’t!?)

Smaller CEFs Give You Big Payouts And “Baked in” Upside

We’re going to bust through that barrier and look at how we can use CEFs to boost our income streams and our net worth, too.

We can dial ourselves in for even bigger gains when we focus on smaller CEFs, like the ones I emphasize in my CEF Insider service.… Read more

Let’s be honest: we dividend investors will be glad to see the back of 2021. While it’s been a great year for us at my CEF Insider service (our portfolio yields 7.2%, on average, and we’ve seen some nice double-digit winners, too), it seems like every day begins with a market-crushing (and anxiety-inducing!) news story.

To be honest, 2022 will likely bring much of the same, but if you do what I strongly recommend—stay away from the business news as much as possible—you’ll do your portfolio (and your mental health!) a big favor.

You and I both know the pundits rarely get it right anyway (who remembers the hand-wringing worries about deflation 12 months ago?… Read more

I shudder when folks tell me their portfolios can’t give them a decent income stream. Because I know there’s an easy way for them to get safe 8%+ payouts—and everyone misses it.

Let’s be honest. When it comes to investing, most people limit themselves to the blue chip stocks of the S&P 500. The problem? These stocks pay a miserly 1.2% average yield. So you’re getting a measly $1,200 in yearly dividend income for every $100K invested!

No one is retiring on that—unless they have a couple million bucks lying around.

But there is another way. It’s a potent income generator I’ve been specializing in for more than a decade—and sharing with investors through my CEF Insider service.… Read more

Investors sometimes tell me that closed-end funds (CEFs) are complicated—riddled with jargon-y terms like discounts to NAV and net investment income (NII).

The truth is, while it may take a little bit of time to learn the ropes, the effort pays off in spades, since CEFs can get you about $3,000 per month in dividend income on a $500K investment! That could mean retiring a decade or more before folks who rely on low-yielding S&P 500 stocks or ETFs.

(And of course, if you’re a member of my CEF Insider service, I do the legwork for you, letting you collect our portfolio’s 7.3% average yield, with upside, without having to spend hours in front of a computer screen.)… Read more

Inflation is up, stocks are soaring (Omicron be damned!) and bargains are thin on the ground.

Well, not all stocks are soaring—one sector has fallen behind, and it’s set us up for some nice “snap back” upside in 2022, with big dividends (yielding up to 7.6%!) on the side. We’ll talk tickers in a moment. First, let’s take a 50,000-foot view of the sector we’re going to dive into and work our way down from there.

That would be real estate, specifically publicly traded real estate investment trusts (REITs), which have been left in the dust in the pandemic- (and Federal Reserve–) powered market of 2020/2021.… Read more

The Omicron variant is here—what does it mean for us dividend investors?

Simple—we’ll simply do the same thing we did the last time COVID spooked markets: buy tech-focused closed-end funds (CEFs) with huge payouts!

Members of my CEF Insider service will remember that we did just that in March 2020, at the trough of the market’s initial pandemic plunge, buying the BlackRock Science & Technology Trust II (BSTZ) when it yielded 7.3% and traded at a 6.6% discount to NAV. We then rode it to a nice 21% total return in just two months!

BSTZ Gave Us a Nice Profit in the First COVID Panic

Our first hint that tech is the right thing to buy now is came in last Friday’s chaos, in which all countries saw their markets dip, but interestingly only the tech-focused NASDAQ 100 (QQQ) fell less than 2%

That’s telling, because if governments around the world institute new shutdowns, the last sector to suffer will be tech.… Read more

Today we’re going to dive into two closed-end funds (CEFs) that have what everyone is on the hunt for these days—massive yields! Both pay more than 8% on average and tempt us with big upside, too, as they’re far cheaper than most other CEFs.

Let’s stop there for a second and talk a bit about CEFs: they’re a small group of funds known for their high yields (averaging around 6.8% across the board currently). They’re like ETFs in that they’re diversified, with each CEF typically buying hundreds of assets within a specific investment strategy.

Unlike ETFs, though, CEFs often trade for less than the actual market value of the assets inside the fund.… Read more

Another day, another sign the first-level crowd is (wrongly!) losing its head over inflation—and yet another opportunity for us to tap those fears for big dividends!

Let’s start with the number the headline-focused crowd can’t move past: 6.2%, which is the jump consumer prices took in October 2021, compared to a year earlier.

Inflation Lurches Higher …

But something strange is going on here—the stock market doesn’t care. While we’ve been hearing about inflation pretty much all year, the S&P 500 still jumped 25% in 2021. That’s because, while the “dumb money” panicked and sold out at various points during the year, the big institutional players—or the “smart money”—stayed long, and indeed bought more.… Read more

I hate to see everyday folks grinding it out with “has-been” dividend payers like AT&T (T) when there are dozens of safe 7%+ yielders out there, many with incredible performance histories, too. 

Trouble is, most people don’t know where to look. But I’ll take you on a personal tour of this overlooked corner of the market (and reveal the ticker of one of the best of these investments, which is throwing off a 10.2% yield as I write this) today.

First, back to Ma Bell: sure, she yields a high 8.4%, but the stock is one of the biggest yield traps on the market!… Read more

I’m hearing from a lot of CEF Insider members who are worried about inflation these days, and there’s a good reason why: consumer prices raced up 6.2% in October from a year ago!

The good news is that we’ve got an easy setup that lets us work inflation fears to our advantage, grabbing ourselves bigger dividends, and bigger price upside, as we do. All we have to do is buy stock-focused closed-end funds (CEFs) on dips when inflation reports come out.

(Below we’ll discuss two CEFs you can target on these dips. They’re built to protect your portfolio—and your dividends!—if inflation proves more than transitory.… Read more