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Have you refinanced your house recently?

Me neither. Somehow, for our house it’s already four years ago, though I can remember the transaction like it was yesterday.

Full credit for the smart financial move to my wife, who asked about refi timing over (and over) and fortunately got it through my thick head before interest rates really started to rise. Fed Chair Jay Powell was running the printing presses like crazy and long rates (mortgage included) would eventually lift from basement levels.

When refi activity slows, it is bullish for elite 8.5%-yielding Rithm Capital (RITM). RITM, our old Contrarian Income Report friend, smartly purchased a stockpile of mortgage service rights (MSRs), which gain in value as rates grind sideways or up.… Read more

Contrarians that we are, we know when we hear things that sound like “common wisdom,” we need to look just a little bit deeper.

Today, that’s what we’re going to do, with a common refrain we’re hearing a lot—that tariffs will lead to a spike in interest rates.

Then we’ll look at a bond play that’s set to benefit from this misunderstood mantra. This smartly run fund pays a dividend that yields 10.4% and comes our way monthly, too.

Tariffs Here, Tariffs There …

To be sure, tariffs have arrived. President Trump has imposed a 10% levy on all products China exports to the US (and 15% on liquefied natural gas and certain types of coal), effective last Tuesday.… 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

Worried about the next round of tariffs? Tech disruption from DeepSeek? The geopolitical landscape?

All of the above?

Fret not my contrarian friend—here are seven wonderfully-sleepy dividend stocks. They yield between 5% and 14.1% and we are discussing them today because all seven boast low betas.

This means these shares move less than the overall market. An admirable quality when it comes to a dividend stock because we’re not here for the price drama, we’re here for the payout.

Beta represents an investment’s volatility against a benchmark. Stock beta is typically benchmarked against the S&P 500, aka “the market.” Beta is based around the number 1, so a stock with a beta equal to 1 moves with the market.… 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

Many of you have written in asking about DeepSeek’s latest release and its potential effects on our income portfolio and strategies. Let’s discuss the latest in AI because, yes, there are ripples into Dividendland that are not fully appreciated by mainstream investors.

(And tariff questions, we’ll get to you in the coming weeks!)

First the DeepSeek disruption in AI, and let’s take vanilla dividend darling Nasdaq 100 Covered Call ETF (QYLD), which yields 12.2% as our example. Is that big divvie still safe and secure? Income seekers are constantly staring at the fund, writing in to ask me if they have permission to:

1. Buy QYLD.

Here at Contrarian Outlook, we are—unequivocally—bullish on the US economy. We’re also big fans of the 6.1% dividend we’re going to discuss below, which trades for less than half its annual sales.

That’s pretty much the opposite of the nosebleed 26 times sales (and 0.03% yield—not a typo!) over at NVIDIA (NVDA), even after last week’s panic over Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek.

US Stocks Are Wealth-Building Machines …

Fact is, it’s easy to be bullish on the US these days, with the country’s economy leading (and in many cases lapping!) those of other countries.

The IMF, for example, sees the US economy growing 2.7% in 2025, tops in the G7 and nearly triple the forecast 1% growth in the Eurozone.… 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.

This week’s AI panic has opened up a rare bargain window in big tech names that were disposed of with the DeepSeek bathwater.

Nosebleed Nvidia (NVDA)—which we warned about here and here—is a “stay away.” But there are tech dividends worth exploring, with some paying us up to 13% a year.

Investors have been herded into the same AI and technology names that have been at the forefront for years, and—shockingly—those shares have largely been priced for perfection.

Chinese AI upstart DeepSeek has shown that deep pockets are not needed to build smart AI models. This should have come as no surprise, as China is home to many smart technologists.… Read more

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