Articles

As I’m sure you have heard, Moody’s downgraded US debt last weekend.

The stock market panic that ensued lasted for, oh, about an hour of trading.

Why did this already get shrugged off? It’s a classic empty-calorie headline. The practical impact of the downgrade to top holders of Treasuries—banks and pension funds—is nil.

Treasuries are still classified as top-grade collateral, which means banks can continue to leverage these securities. T-bills are just as good as cash for bank reserves, as they were before the downgrade. No need to scramble for new collateral.

And Treasuries still have investment-grade status, which means pension funds don’t have to make any moves.… Read more

We need to talk about one dividend grower that’s set to win big from this sudden breakout of tariff peace.

It’s an all-American stock that’s “dirt” cheap now. I’m talking about CF Industries (CF), a holding of my Hidden Yields service. CF makes fertilizers and is the world’s largest maker of ammonia, a key ingredient of fertilizer.

How do we know CF is primed to win as China and Uncle Sam take a breather?

We’re quite literally following the money here: CF’s management team is piling in with huge stock buybacks—to the tune of 20% of the company’s “float” over the last three years.… Read more

Can we still call ourselves contrarians if we buy into “mainstream” trends like the stunning growth of AI? Of course we can.

Today we’re going to do just that. But of course we’re not picking up obvious names like NVIDIA (NVDA). Instead we’re looking to an 8%-paying fund I see having even more upside than the “go-to” AI stocks everyone else is buying.

For Profitable Contrarian Investing, Think “Oblique,” Not “Direct”

The technique we’re going to use here is a very underappreciated concept called “oblique investing.”

Sounds a bit dry, I know, but it’s anything but. The idea here is, roughly speaking, to invest in big forces driving the market and shifting the economy over the foreseeable future.… Read more

Is it time to buy the dip on these dividends—which by the way yield between 5.3% and 7.6%?

Yes, the market-at-large has bounced quite a bit. But these payers remain mired in the bargain bin.

Vanilla investors who only focus on the S&P 500 have serious FOMO. They worry that they missed the pullback. The best buying opportunity, at least in terms of the plain “SPY” ETF owned by most of America, lasted only a week or two:

The S&P 500 Dip Didn’t Last Long

But there are still cheap dividend payers that haven’t rallied alongside the popular names. At least not yet.… Read more

About a month ago, Mike Bird, the Wall Street editor for The Economist, tweeted (or “X-ed,” I guess I should say) the following: “You have to concede that there would be a form of stupid, ridiculous beauty in the S&P 500 closing completely flat for April.”

And, well, after all the drama we saw in April, that’s pretty much where we landed.

A Wild—But in the End, Sideways—April for Stocks

I once met Mike for coffee, and he’s a friendly, intelligent person, so it’s easy for me to agree with him here: Yes, the market behaved stupidly in April, starting with the tariff selloff and ending with the first hints of a deal with China (with various back-and-forth moves on tariffs in between).… Read more

The UK trade deal was apparently the tasty egg roll before the main course of lower Chinese tariffs. A delightful order for this dividend grower, ready to feast on the “Peking duck” of trade agreements.

China is one of the biggest buyers of US crops, importing tens of billions of dollars of American agriculture every year. Soybeans and corn meander from Midwest farms all the way across the Pacific to feed China’s large (and growing) livestock industry. Higher US-China tariffs have weighed on US farmers’ profitability—and in turn, on business for key ag suppliers like Corteva Agriscience (CTVA).

So the “trade truce” with China (announced Monday) is quite bullish for Corteva.… Read more

Are we careening towards a recession, or is a pickup in inflation the big threat to the stock market?

The negative first quarter GDP print has recession fears in the financial headlines. Meanwhile, Fed Chair Jay Powell remains fixated on inflation.

Ironically, both may come to pass. Which means we must prepare our portfolios for a slowdown that is quickly followed by a pickup in prices.

Let’s put one smart lender on our “Goldilocks” watch list. This ticker yields 10% today (with some nice “dividend insurance” we’ll talk about in a moment). But the key point is that it profits as inflation—and interest rates—tick higher.… Read more

I get it: For many people, the rough start to 2025 conjures (painful!) memories of 2022.

It’s an easy comparison to make. But we must resist doing so. Because unlike in 2022, today’s volatility is caused by panic alone. That’s the kind of situation we contrarians love!

Nonetheless, I get it if you still want to be cautious. With that in mind, I’ve got a fund that gives us full market exposure with a key “hedge”—and a growing 8.1% dividend, too.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s first talk about what’s causing this “Chicken Littleism” in the first place.… Read more

While vanilla income investors limit their search to mere “common” dividends, we contrarians know where the real payout party is at—with preferred divvies.

Let’s talk about three preferred-stock vehicles that pay from 6.9% to 9.4%. All three of these funds dish monthly dividends.

And these payouts receive preferential treatment over common-stock dividends, making them safer than the common payouts offered by regular ol’ equities.

There are four main ways to buy preferreds, and three of them have some serious headaches and drawbacks:

1. Individual preferred stocks: Research resources for individual preferred shares are few, far between and often require expensive paid subscriptions.

Can you and I beat the legendary returns of Warren Buffett? Absolutely. What’s more, we can do it while “translating” a slice of our gains into a big income stream (with special dividends on the table, too).

I’ll show you how in a moment.

First, we need to talk about how the 94-year-old Oracle of Omaha, who is now stepping back from the position of president and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), has changed the course of investing over the years.

Every year, as you likely know, Buffett releases a simple letter to investors showing what’s happened with Berkshire’s portfolio.… Read more