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Just when I thought 2022 couldn’t get any stranger, my inflation research led me to a bold but inescapable conclusion. We’re living a financial prophecy foretold by the gameshow The Price is Right.

Cliff Hangers, to be specific, teaches the 2022 monetary scene perfectly.

The contest features a climber moving from left to right along an upward-sloping mountain, with a scale of 0 to 25. The contestant bids on a few household items, and the climber moves by the number of dollars the guess misses by.

A perfect bid and the climber will stay put. Off by $10, and the climber will move up 10.… Read more

Most investors ignore the “magnetic” connection between dividends and share prices. It’s causing them to miss out on huge gains—and setting them up for big losses, too.

Here’s what I mean: in my earlier article in our ongoing series on my “Dividend Magnet” approach to investing, I gave you example after example of how a rising dividend almost inevitably drags a company’s share price up with it.

This is one of the main reasons why we demand a dividend that’s not only growing but accelerating in my Hidden Yields dividend-growth service.

It’s clear as a bell in the chart of Texas Instruments (TXN), below, one of the examples we discussed in our previous article.… Read more

Thanks to the selloff, it’s possible to buy closed-end funds (CEFs) at such high yields that we can do what seemed unthinkable just a few months ago: build a CEF portfolio that will pay $5,000 a month in dividends on about $540k invested.

That’s an 11.1% average yield!

This, of course, is because many CEFs have been caught up in the selloff, and yields move inversely to prices. So a fund that may have yielded, say, 7% six months ago (which is about the long-term CEF average) is suddenly yielding a lot more now.

In addition, it’s possible to build an income stream this big with just three CEFs.… Read more

Patience is the key to being a successful contrarian investor.

We buy when fear is widespread. Bear markets are our friends. Let’s sit back and let the market’s valuations come down to us.

I wrote very recently that the market is this close to sending out a market-wide buy signal. Let’s get ready to back up the truck.

Today, we’ll discuss targets for retirement income yielding a ludicrous 12.9%—after all, a self-sustaining portfolio that allows you to live off dividends alone can give you enormous peace of mind once you’re past your working years.

And if those dividends land in your mailbox or account every 30 days or so, matching your monthly bills…well, that’s even better.… Read more

While the pundits continue to (unsuccessfully) try to call the bottom of this Fed-spooked market, we CEF investors are doing what we always do: collecting our 7%+ dividends as we patiently move through to brighter days.

In fact, we’re doing more than that: we’re making some careful long-term buys as our fellow CEF investors—a conservative lot if there ever was one—toss out funds that are actually well suited to the higher-rate world we’re moving into.

I want to talk about one such fund today: it does something that has a lot of appeal in a market like this—it keeps you invested in the S&P 500, but with a twist: it hands you an outsized income stream that actually grows more stable as volatility picks up.… Read more

Have we seen the lows yet?

Well, we’re oversold and due for a rally. Overdue, really. (Stop me if you’ve heard this before…)

Assuming we get a bounce, I’m still inclined to sell any rips higher that we see.

Someday we’ll buy this dip. Heck, we’ll back up our dividend truck. I just don’t think it’s time yet.

First, I’d like to see market breadth begin to improve under the surface. This is often what typically happens before markets bottom. We see individual stocks begin to “act better” than the Dow or S&P. These leaders quietly establish their lows and begin to rally.… Read more

Look, I’m as ready for this selloff to end as you are. And when stocks drop—sending dividend yields skyward—I so badly want to back up the truck.

As value-focused dividend investors, buying dips is what we live to do. Sitting in cash is agonizing to me, as I’m sure it is to you, too.

But it just isn’t time yet. Which is why I’ve recommended just one stock this year in my Contrarian Income Report service, while urging my readers to stockpile cash. And after last Thursday’s dumpster fire, we’re sure glad we did!

We’ve also lightened up our portfolio over these last few months, including taking some nice profits on three bank stocks we sold in May:

There was nothing wrong with these three: they were just benefiting from the Fed’s injection of cash into the markets, and the gap between the 10-year Treasury (at which they lend to clients) and the Fed’s policy rate (at which they lend to each other).… Read more

Look, I know this inflation-panicked market is frustrating. But despite the endless doomsaying from the pundits, there is good news: if you’re investing for income and have a long time horizon, there are some big dividends (I’m talking 10%+ yields) waiting for us in closed-end funds (CEFs).

In a second, we’re going to dive into three such funds I’ve assembled into a low-drama “mini-portfolio” yielding north of 10%.

We can thank the selloff for this opportunity: when stock (and CEF) prices go down, yields go up. And our CEFs discounts to net asset value (NAV, or the per-share value of a CEF’s portfolio) fall to bargain levels.… Read more

Get your dip-buying lists ready, because it’s almost time to pounce.

Just recently, I explained to investors that, as a contrarian, we only want to fully dive into the market when we have a clear edge—the kind of edge you get when Wall Street has fully capitulated:

“We only want to fully invest when the regular investor has thrown in the towel. And there are plenty of indicators that can tell us exactly when our time has come. Consider, for example, the closely watched CNN Fear/Greed Index, which sits at 26 as I write.”

That was just a week ago.… Read more

As difficult as this selloff has been for all of us, it has left some attractive (and discounted) dividends on the board, especially in high-yield closed-end funds (CEFs).

I know it’s tough to buy in a market like this, but the dividends we’re going to talk about today actually benefit from rising inflation, posting higher and higher cash flows as the CPI shoots higher and higher, too.

These are the companies we want to be in now, both to collect their high dividends through today’s tire fire and to profit when the market waters (inevitably) calm and investors finally take notice of these stocks’ sturdy cash flows.… Read more