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Not many people know this, but you can actually “magnify” the return of a regular stock—just by holding it through a closed-end fund (CEF)!

That’s in addition to getting a much bigger dividend than the typical S&P 500 stock dribbles out: 7%+ payouts are, of course, common in the CEF space.

So how does our CEF “gain magnifier” work?

It comes down to what at first blush seems to be a rather obscure fact: CEFs (which trade on the market, just like stocks or ETFs), generally have a fixed number of shares for the entirety of their lives. That means their market price can be different from their per-share net asset values (NAV, or the value of the stocks they hold in their portfolios).… Read more

Finally, food! The kids had their slices. I had a break in my own conversation. And I was hungry after coaching and refereeing eight periods of second-grade basketball.

I took the opportunity to grab the greasiest slice of Margherita pizza on the tray and folded it like a proper East Coast refugee. And paused.

“Coach Brett?”

“Yeah buddy,” I replied to one of my players, slice still in hand.

“Do you have 40 cents?”

“No, sorry buddy.” I shrugged. And attempted to eat once again.

Then my daughter approached.

“Dad. Do you have 40 cents?”

Forty cents. That was pretty specific.… Read more

Food stocks have been hit hard this year—and we contrarian dividend shoppers can no longer ignore the bargains on offer!

Investors’ overly negative take on these “essential” dividend plays makes zero sense because:

1. They’re partly the result of low fertilizer prices, which can’t last because …
2. The world needs more food: according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, global food demand will soar 70% by 2050, and …
3. Food supply is tight, no thanks to droughts and Putin’s disastrous war (Russia and Ukraine are the world’s No. 3 and No. 10 wheat producers).

The result? Grocery bills that drain our wallets faster than we can fill our carts!… Read more

Today we’re going to click our way to a dividend stream that matches the average household income stream in America—$70,784 per year—and we’re not going to do it on a much smaller nest egg than most people think is possible.

This is important now, because the financial media continues to pump out ridiculous answers to the question of how much most folks need to retire. A recent Bloomberg story, for example, said we’d need $3 million saved to clock out comfortably!

Luckily for us that number is way off. Consider this chart:

Source: CEF Insider

Here you see four different scenarios for getting that $70,784 in yearly dividend income, including two Trinity University studies showing risky and conservative estimates, based on 3% and 4% withdrawal rates.… Read more

Real estate is getting thumped, which means real estate investment trusts (REITs) are a bargain once again.

Finally! REIT yields are back to where they ought to be—(land)lording over the vanilla S&P 500:

We contrarians, of course, can do even better than the popular Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ). While 3.5% isn’t bad, it pales in comparison to the 12.7% “headline yield” we’re about to discuss.

Why are REITs cheap again? Simple: The Fed.

As I mentioned months ago, higher interest rates mean not only higher costs of capital for REITs (and all other companies, for that matter), but also more competition for income as bond yields become increasingly competitive.… Read more

When it comes to closed-end funds (or any investment, for that matter), it pays to look for things most people misunderstand. Because these (seemingly) tiny investor oversights and errors can give us keen-eyed contrarians our best buying opportunities.

And when it comes to CEFs, there’s one all-too-common mistake I see folks make time and time again, particularly those who are new to these high-yielding funds. To see what I’m getting at, let’s zero in on a CEF called the Columbia Seligman Premium Technology Growth Fund (STK).

STK Romps to a Triple-Digit Return

STK’s portfolio mainly consists of large-cap tech stocks: Apple (AAPL), chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO) and Microsoft (MSFT) are among its top holdings.… Read more

These 5.7% and 8.9% dividend payers are ready to rally.

Whether they pop this year or next, we shall see. It’s a matter of when rather than if—which is what we gladly sign up for as income investors.

The broader stock market appears to be on a near-term sugar high. Crypto is going (a bit) crazy and meme stocks (of all things) are back. Count us careful contrarians cautious!

We instead turn our attention to natural gas—a market that has already corrected.

Remember when “natty” prices were supposed to go to the moon this winter? We feared that Europe, without Russian gas imports, would be in for a long cold season.… Read more

Let’s go ahead and grab a slice of AI’s furious growth and get ourselves a nice 6% dividend (paid monthly), too.

Better still, we’re going to get in at an unheard-of 13% discount! Plus we’re going to do it safely—not tying up our cash in profitless tech or miserly blue chips dribbling out paltry 1% to 3% dividends.

Like Buying Microsoft, But With a 6% Dividend (Paid Monthly)

When someone mentions AI, the first stock that that likely pops to mind is Microsoft (MSFT) and its flashy move to integrate the ChatGPT AI into its Bing search engine.

That came straight from the company’s $10-billion investment in OpenAI, ChatGPT’s developer—a move that paid off: Microsoft has its search-engine game back after Bing spent the last decade in the dumpster with ’90s throwbacks like AskJeeves and Yahoo.… Read more

When I was a kid, I thought everyone on TV was rich. I know better now, of course, but it still strikes me when I hear stories of celebrities going broke, struggling to earn a living or taking on projects just because they desperately need to pay off some kind of debt.

It just goes to show that being famous isn’t enough to have true financial freedom.

That’s why I was intrigued by a recent interview with That ’70s Show star Ashton Kutcher, who has built a name for himself in the VC world by investing in tech startups. Kutcher’s string of successes is impressive: he was an early investor in Uber, Airbnb and Spotify, for example.… Read more

Bull or bear? Who cares when we can collect dividends between 10.1% and 11.8%.

That’s not a typo. The S&P 500 pays 1.7%. The 10-year Treasury yields two points more at 3.7%.

That’s better—but it ain’t 11.8%!

The same million-dollar retirement portfolio can either generate $17,000, $37,000 or $118,000 per year. Tough choice!

And better yet, the double-digit dividends I mentioned aren’t penny stocks. We’re talking about diversified funds, with dozens of holdings, managed by skilled advisors that often have decades of experience at the helm.

How Do You Spell “Massive Income”? C-E-F.

A couple of weeks ago, we discussed CEFs versus ETFs:

“If I can give you just one piece of advice to start 2023, it’s this: do not trust your dividend income to ETFs!”