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At my CEF Insider service, we started 2024 expecting stocks to rise about 10% to 15% this year. Well, we’re well within that range now: the S&P 500 is up just under 14% in 2024, as of this writing.

And it’s only June! Which means that while stocks can keep going higher, we’ll likely see more dips as the market catches its breath.

We’ll use those dips to pick up our favorite 8%+ yielding closed-end funds (CEFs), of course. But we don’t have to wait around for our next dip-buying opportunity—I’ve got three bargain-priced bond funds for you to consider now, yielding up to 12.5%.… Read more

$500K can be enough money to retire on. Even as early as age 50!

The trick is to convert the pile of cash into cash flow that can pay the bills. I’m talking about $39,965.51 per year in dividend income on that nest egg, thanks to 8% average yields.

These are passive payouts that show up every quarter or, better yet, every month. Meanwhile, we keep that $500K nest egg intact. Or, better yet, grind that principal higher steadily and safely.

Got more in your retirement account? Cool—more monthly dividend income for you!

We’ll talk specific stocks, funds and yields in a moment.… Read more

When it comes right down to it, there are really only two ways to get rich:

• Through your investments.

• Through your labor.

Let me be clear that we aren’t fans of Option 2. A J-O-B? No thanks! We’re retired—or on our way to it.

Don’t worry. Your income strategist has you covered.

How to Retire on 8%+ Dividends That Roll in “Overnight”

If you’re like me, on your dividend “paydays”—a stock’s payable date, in other words—you wake up, grab a coffee, log into your investment account and immediately do something with that “work-free” income.

Pay your bills, reinvest, drop it into an emergency fund—whatever works for you.… Read more

You probably remember the first time you heard about ChatGPT. The AI tool’s lifelike responses seemed like magic—so much so that people were debating whether generative AI tools like it were actually conscious.

Such a debate was honestly a bit silly, and it didn’t last long. But the idea that these large-language models were sentient proved how much AI can emotionally influence people.

Fast-forward to today and that response is much less starry-eyed. You’ve no doubt run across AI-created content and art on the Internet that is, frankly, terrible (not to mention glaringly obvious). That’s prompted outlets like The Wall Street Journal to tell us “The AI revolution is already losing steam” and compare the industry to the “biggest crashes of the first dot-com bubble.”… Read more

Is there anything better than a true bond bargain? I mean, feed me those monthly dividends with a side of price upside and I’ll never ask for anything more!

Gains from a bond fund? Yes, we contrarian income investors want it all. And we can have it when we buy funds yielding up to 9.4% at discounts up to 12%.

Mr. and Ms. Market are finally realizing that rates did not eclipse their 2023 highs. In fact, they appear to be putting in a lower high, which would be quite bullish for the bonds that Wall Street has been ironically panning all year:

Reality Check: Rates Still Lower Than Last Year

And what’s good for bonds is also good for one of my favorite income investments: the preferred stock.… Read more

You may have noticed that since the pandemic, there’s been a somewhat perverse desire to make the economy look worse than it is.

Whether it’s concerns about a looming recession—the so-called “vibecession” we talked about last week—or worries that life is getting too expensive because of inflation, there’s a growing bias toward doom-and-gloom.

Plus, pessimistic people tend to sound serious—and for many pundits, parroting these arguments is easier than actually analyzing data.

At CEF Insider, we remain 100% data-driven, for the simple reason that it’s profitable. After all, the doom-and-gloom was at a fever pitch in late 2022, and we all know how stocks have done since.… Read more

At some point in my investing life, every participant turned into a trend follower. These “investors” like to buy when an established uptrend is already in place, when purchasing is perceived as “safe.”

Of course, this is the riskiest time to put new money to work. It is also the opposite of what we contrarian income investors do. We buy low and sell high. We do not, like the trend followers, buy high in hopes of selling even higher.

Buy and hope is not a strategy, as my favorite chardonnay label can attest:

(Shout out to my man Barry at Global View Capital Management for the work of art!)… Read more

The market volatility we contrarians have been waiting for is finally starting to show up—and we’re going to play it with a cheap energy fund paying a sweet 9.1% dividend.

These days, most investors think energy is played out. But the truth is, we’ve seen a “slow-mo” selloff, with crude tumbling about 10% from back in early April.

And we’ve got Uncle Sam on our side here, too.

This is an election year after all, and last week we got word the Biden Administration will empty the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve, set up to provide an emergency supply after Superstorm Sandy in 2014.… Read more

I’ve been covering CEFs for about a decade, and I’ve never seen them get as much attention as they are right now.

And it’s only the beginning.

We talked about the much-brighter spotlight on our favorite income plays in the November issue of my CEF Insider service. Back then, we noted that big institutional investors (including the particularly aggressive folks at Saba Capital Management) were starting to pressure CEFs to change or shut down.

Shuttering a fund may sound dramatic, but the key thing to bear in mind here is that doing so can result in an immediate gain for investors.… Read more

Income investors love Dividend Aristocrats. And why not? These are stocks that have delivered dividend raises year after year for many decades.

But we can do even better than the Aristocrats. And get stinkin’ rich in the process by buying these payout raisers before they have clocked 25 years of divvie growth (the qualification to be an Aristocrat).

This is where the real money is made.

The problem with some Aristocrats is that their best days are behind them. When a company reaches a level of dividend maturity, payout ratios can get bloated, and payout increases can become incremental and tied to a company’s modest profit growth.… Read more