Author Archive: Michael Foster

Imagine two closed-end funds (CEFs) that both yield upwards of 7%. Sounds great, right? Buy a bit of both and get $58.33 per month for every $10,000 you invest. Put in $500K and you’ve got a middle-class income dropping into your account without you having to do a thing.

While that’s a great way to achieve financial independence, we CEF investors know it’s not as easy as searching out a couple of 7% yielders and buying them. We need to go deeper.

While there are over a hundred CEFs yielding 7% or more right now, their quality varies widely. Some are yield traps that will drain your capital with lousy price performance over time, more than offsetting any dividend cash they pay you.… Read more

Imagine getting $100 per month in passive income for every $10,000 you invest. That amounts to a $35,000 annual dividend stream with less than $300,000 saved.

It’s not impossible. In fact, investors do it all the time with my favorite high-yield investments—closed-end funds (CEFs). While the average yield on CEFs is currently 6.2%, a third of these funds yield upwards of 7%, and 17 boast payouts of 10% and higher.

Source: CEF Insider

CEFs’ payouts are particularly impressive considering the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY), an index fund tracking the S&P 500, yields a paltry 1.3% today—the lowest yield for the stock market in 20 years.… Read more

Once folks get a taste of closed-end funds (CEFs), they typically rave about one thing: the dividends! Yields of 7% and up are common with CEFs, and they often come your way monthly.

We also love the fact that even though CEFs are a small corner of the market (with only about 500 or so out there), we can build a diversified portfolio with them: there are CEFs that hold US and international stocks, bonds, real estate—even private equity. You name it.

This broad range gets us around a problem most income-seekers face: being forced to stake significant sums in single stocks just to get big payouts.… Read more

A couple weeks ago, we talked about the “index boomerang effect,” my favorite way to grab fast double-digit price gains in closed-end funds (CEFs).

It’s a simple one-click indicator that can hand you huge price gains on a CEF you pick up today. And those gains are in addition to the huge dividends these funds pay—the typical CEF yields a life-changing 7% today, and plenty pay out even more than that (often monthly, too!).

Here’s how my strategy works: all things being equal, CEFs focusing on a certain asset class (corporate bonds, say) will perform similarly, and will likely outperform their index.… Read more

Plenty of investors will tell you that the higher an investment’s dividend yield, the greater the risk you’ll suffer a big dividend cut, especially in a market downturn.

To that I have one response: these folks have never invested in closed-end funds (CEFs)!

The portfolio of our CEF Insider service is a case in point. It yields a healthy 6.6% on average—five times more than the income-starved S&P 500 crowd gets—and the payouts on our funds have held up beautifully throughout this crisis.

Like the Eaton Vance Tax-Advantaged Global Dividend Fund (ETG), which we bought in January 2020, when it yielded a handsome 6.7%.… Read more

I get plenty of questions about specific closed-end funds from members of my CEF Insider service, which focuses on quick-moving smaller CEFs (here I mean those with sub-$1-billion market caps).

We love these CEF “small fry” because they hand us big dividends (7%+ yields are common in this corner of the CEF market) at a bargain, because these funds get little coverage from Wall Street and the mainstream media.

But when they do get “found,” their discounts disappear fast, catapulting us to some nice price gains to go along with our big payouts.

New 6.5%-Yielding PIMCO Fund: Buy, Hold or Sell?… Read more

Far too many investors think inflation is bad news for closed-end funds (CEFs), for a simple reason: they fear it’ll boost CEFs’ borrowing costs. (Because CEFs, of course, use leverage to varying degrees.)

That sounds like a reason to worry. Inflation, after all, boosts interest rates, and higher rates obviously mean CEFs would have to pay more to service their loans.

Bad news, right?

Not so fast! Because nearly everyone forgets the other side to the story—that inflation (at least these days) comes with a strong economy—and that drives investment returns that’ll more than offset any small rise in CEFs’ borrowing costs.… Read more

Let’s say you want to generate a middle-class wage using only dividends, but you’ve only got $300,000 to invest. Can it be done?

It certainly can—and it’s easy to do with just three funds you can buy right now.

Drop $300K into these three income generators and you’ll get an outsized 9.8% dividend stream. That translates into a steady $2,450 every single month. And since these funds pay dividends monthly (as opposed to your typical S&P 500 stock, which pays quarterly), you’ll start getting that income in just 30 days (or less) if you invest right now.

Best of all, none of these funds force you to buy into risky small companies, toxic financial derivatives or any other speculative investments.… Read more

Most people don’t realize this, but there’s a simple, two-step way to grab serious gains in high-yield closed-end funds (CEFs).

I call it the Index Boomerang Effect. And when I say it’s simple, I’m not kidding around.

It goes like this: over time, we can expect a CEF in a particular asset class to perform around as well as the index that represents it (though to be honest, the best CEFs tend to beat their indexes handily, which makes our strategy even more powerful).

But even the best CEFs do lag their indexes from time to time. The key is to spot those times and buy—then ride your CEF to strong gains as the index “pulls” its share price higher.… Read more

If you’re on the lookout for an expert to help you build your nest egg—and bulk up your dividend stream to, say, a 6%+ yield—you have two main choices: a professional wealth manager or an investment advisory service (or a newsletter, as they’re more commonly known).

Which is for you? Let’s break down both options. Then we’ll dive into the kind of three-fund portfolio a newsletter might tip you off to, with a healthy 6.1% income stream and a history of double-digit yearly returns, too.

Wealth Managers Charge More, But They’re a Help in a Crisis

With active wealth management, the main concern most people have is fees.… Read more