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Shall we turn 2023 into a bounce back year for our retirement portfolios?

How about we shoot for, say, 23% total returns?

The surest way to do it is by employing a technique I call the dividend magnet. It’s safe. Reliable. And works beautifully on the back side of a bear market.

A few weeks back I gave a guest lecture for a finance class at California State University, Sacramento. One of the students, to put it lightly, was excited to make money in stocks.

His hand went up from the back of the classroom. (Nobody sits in the front rows.… Read more

Everywhere you look, there’s a subscription service begging for your attention: from Netflix (NFLX) to cable TV … and even a Hot Sauce of the Month Club.

Pretty well everyone has at least one, and many folks have several. One study showed that 7% of American households have six or more services for video alone!

There’s a reason why companies charge recurring revenues, of course. It’s a great business model to hit up our credit cards monthly.

But great businesses don’t always translate to rewarding stocks. We contrarian dividend seekers tend to steer clear of the streamers because:

1. They pay no dividends!

We’ve got plenty of high-quality dividends on the table as we roll into 2023. Some of the best? Closed-end funds (CEFs) yielding north of 7.5%. Three specific names and tickers are coming up for you below.

I mention quality because if 2022 has showed us anything, it’s that quality matters: crypto and profitless tech got clobbered this year, and that was no one-off. With interest rates rising, these gambles—I say “gambles” because buying these was always more like a trip to the slot machines than investing—are likely down for the count.

You can see this in the performance of the NASDAQ 100, which is down some 28% year to date, as well-run, high-cash-flow companies like Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) were dragged down by basket cases like Meta Platforms (META) and its money-bleeding investments in the metaverse.… Read more

We are heading into the most telegraphed recession in American history. Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell said it himself last month:

“As rates go higher, it’s hard to see a soft landing.”

Gee Jay, no kidding. Your Fed is squeezing us directly into a slowdown with these short-term rate hikes and balance sheet drawdowns.

Now I’m not saying it’s the wrong move, Jay. You printed a lot of money in 2020—so much that we fell way behind the inflation curve in 2021. Economic indicators and price numbers are still running hot.

So I’m not surprised to see your feet on the breaks for most of the year.… Read more

One of the messiest stories on Wall Street this year is the Walt Disney Co. (DIS). And considering the problems elsewhere on Wall Street, that’s saying something!

Disney suspended its dividend a little more than a year ago. Then, more recently, it ousted its CEO Bob Chapek in November. The surprise move came just months after the beleaguered CEO had hired outside consulting firm McKinsey to try and slash spending and restructure operations, a sure sign that company was adrift. The stock has been in a tailspin all year as a result, and is currently down almost 40% since January 1.… Read more

There’s almost certainly a recession on the way, and we closed-end fund (CEF) investors have a big edge over mainstream investors.

That edge is our high, reliable (and often monthly) CEF dividends. Thanks to those mighty payouts (the average yield on our CEF Insider service’s portfolio is 9.9% today), we can bide our time, collect our dividends and buy bargain-priced CEFs on the dips.

In fact, we don’t have to wait long: I’ll give you a conservative CEF pick to consider below that yields 9%, holds oversold large cap tech stocks, like Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL), and is a bargain, to boot.… Read more

Last week in these pages we sang the praises of bond god Jeffrey Gundlach. His DoubleLine Income Solutions Fund (DSL) looked poised to pop:

DSL investors have three ways to win here. First, the fund pays an electric 11.5% yield. Next, its NAV is likely to rise as both short and long rates decline. And finally, the fund trades today at a 4% discount, which means we are getting paid to ride shotgun with Gundlach.

DSL: 3 Ways to Win (Last Week’s View)

We also discussed that DSL dishes its dividend monthly. Which is almost 1% every 30 days! Unheard of.… Read more

China’s over-the-top COVID lockdowns are setting up a surprising “all-American” dividend opportunity for us contrarians.

The pushback, which President Xi (shockingly) didn’t see coming, has shuttered plants left and right. Last Monday alone, Honda, Yamaha and Volkswagen closed factories in China, as did Nissan, Mazda and Mitsubishi.

And Apple (AAPL) has likely lost out on six million high-margin iPhone 14 Pros as protests shut down a factory in Zhengzhou run by key supplier Foxconn. The stock responded instantly:

Apple: Still a Little Too Multinational for Wall Street

How, you may wonder, is all this bad news setting up a dividend opportunity for us?… Read more

Rising rates have sunk bond prices—and sent their yields higher.

The upshot? Now is a good time to add high-quality corporate bonds to your portfolio. And if you do so through one closed-end fund (CEF) we’ll name in a second, you’ll be able to do so with a 13.4% dividend that grows.

To be honest, bonds have already started to rise, and we’ve been taking advantage in my CEF Insider service. In October, for example, we picked up the Nuveen Core Plus Impact Fund (NPCT), which yields 11.3% today. We’ve grabbed a 6.8% return so far, including one dividend payout of 10 cents a share.… Read more

Bonds are finally an intriguing place for retirement income.

Safe Treasuries still pay a respectable (by their standards, at least) 3.7%. But we contrarians can do better.

Today we’re going to discuss three bond funds ready to rally. They pay 8.6%, 9.1% and—get this—9.6% per year.

Those are not typos. These are fat freaking yields.

Yes, These Bond Yields Are Real. And They Are Spectacular.

And even better still, you can buy these bonds for as low as 90 cents on the dollar! How is that? Well, the cheapest fund trades for just 90% of its net asset value (NAV).… Read more