Author Archive: Michael Foster

We contrarians love a beaten-up corner of the market—especially these days, when cheap stocks (and funds) are so thin on the ground.

Right now, real estate investment trusts (REITs) are that corner of the market: unloved, cheap and boasting high, stable dividends. And they have even more appeal with interest rates stabilizing and likely to move lower over time.

We’re not taking advantage of this opportunity by purchasing our REITs individually or through an ETF, though. Instead, we’re looking to REIT-holding closed-end funds (CEFs). These income machines, kicking out 8%+ dividends, are no less than my top contrarian income plays for 2025.… Read more

If you’re like most income investors, you’re on the hunt for stocks and funds that can stand up to a storm these days.

So that’s what I’m going to give you below—in the form of three “all-weather” closed-end funds (CEFs) kicking out an outsized 6.8% average yield.

They’ve stood firm through every headwind imaginable—wars, pandemics, inflation, you name it—and have done nothing but profit over the long haul. Through all that, this trio has kicked out annualized total returns (with dividends reinvested) of 15%+ each.

“Shock-Proofing” Your Portfolio, Crushing ETFs

These funds’ stellar returns come from both the sector they focus on—tech—and smart management that’s kept all three going strong.… Read more

No two ways about it: This stock market is getting twitchy, and it’s (frankly beyond) time for all investors to take it seriously.

Trade wars. The possibility of spiking inflation. The Fed’s “will they or won’t they” act around rate cuts. And then there’s the ongoing doubt about whether AI will deliver on its big profit promises.

Our 3-Step Volatility Plan: Boost Income, Cut Taxes—and Go Beyond Stocks

We’re all feeling it: The market heads higher, and every day it does, the voice in our head telling us that a fall is around the corner grows just a little bit louder.… Read more

We’ve got three big trends—two that investors know about and one many don’t—setting us up to grab double-digit dividends in real estate investment trusts (REITs).

Now is the time to make our move. Let’s get under the hood of this opportunity and stake out a simple strategy.

Start With the Obvious

REITs have lagged since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the benchmark SPDR Dow Jones REIT ETF (RWR) returning around 17% since the start of 2020, as of this writing.

This shakes out to a 3.3% annualized return over half a decade, well off RWR’s 8.6% average yearly return since its 2001 IPO.… Read more

Trade tensions ratcheted up to 11 this week, and I know that for many readers the wild swings we’re seeing can feel sickening.

To you, I say that times like these are exactly why we hold the closed-end funds (CEFs) in our CEF Insider portfolio. Their high, steady dividends (more than 10% on average across the portfolio) let us collect our income while stocks regain their footing.

We also avoid the trap of panic selling, then seeing the story whipsaw the other way, locking in our losses (which would’ve happened if you’d hit the sell button first thing Monday morning).… Read more

Here’s my take on the DeepSeek selloff we saw last week: It’s a buying opportunity, especially for income investors.

(I wrote a bit about this in last Thursday’s article. Since the market has rebounded a bit since, we’re going to talk about it more today. A preview? It’s not too late to buy the dip.)

Income Investors: 2, Speculators: 0

Why do income investors hold an edge here? Because they have a chance to buy NVIDIA (NVDA) and other AI stocks, including some private-equity firms few people have access to, through closed-end funds (CEFs).

Tapping the selloff this way gives us two key benefits:

1. Big dividends—the two funds at the heart of our strategy yield an average 10.4% when we buy them as a set.

BlackRock is making changes to some of its highest-yielding funds. Today we’re going to zero in on a 13%-yielder that’s at the center of the action: the tech-focused BlackRock Innovation and Growth Term Trust (BIGZ).

Yes, the fund focused on tech. So the pullback in American AI stocks on news that Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek, which was launched earlier this month, can rival the latest version of Open AI’s ChatGPT, factors in here, too.

BIGZ is a closed-end fund (CEF) with nearly $2 billion in assets under management—enormous for a CEF (The “BIG” is right in the ticker, after all).… Read more

With the new administration now in full swing, market events are coming our way at a furious pace.

One thing that’s clear about the next few years? Volatility is likely to tick up, especially with stock valuations stretched. Now more than ever, we need to be diversified, so we’re set up to offset any shocks to any one sector while we collect our high closed-end fund (CEF) dividends.

So that’s what we’re going to do today. And CEFs are the best tool to do it. Through just three funds (see tickers below), we’ll give ourselves access to some of the top blue-chip stocks, real estate investment trusts (REITs) and high-yield bonds out there.… Read more

We hear a lot of chatter in the business media about productivity these days—specifically how it could decline in the US (and, by extension, hit our gains from stocks—and stock-focused CEFs).

Today we’re going to look at why this fear is overblown, and how we income investors can profit—and collect a 6.7% dividend at a 13% discount—off that disconnect.

US productivity, for its part, rises by about 2% on average per year. As we discussed a couple weeks back, the S&P 500 has posted a 10.4% annualized gain since the late 1980s, and we can say that rising productivity accounts for about a fifth of that, so about a 2% gain in stocks on an annualized basis.… Read more

We launched our CEF Insider newsletter nearly eight years ago, in March 2017, and we’ve seen a lot since then: a pandemic, interest-rate swings, dramatic fights between fund managers and activist shareholders, and more.

But for me, the most exciting event has been the over 200% profit one of our long-time picks, a closed-end fund (CEF) called the Adams Diversified Equity Fund (ADX), has delivered to shareholders as of this writing.

Market-Beating Gains With ADX

With a 204.3% return currently as I write this, ADX actually beat the S&P 500 index fund that many American investors opt for: the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY), which is up just 171.5% over the same time period.… Read more