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Personally, I am not a fan of Beyond Meat or any of those fake burgers that are out there. But after a recent trip to the grocery store to buy provisions for a backyard barbecue… the sticker shock alone may turn me into a believer. Ground beef is now up to more than $5 a pound!

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Many folks are getting used to paying more amid the red-hot inflation we’re seeing across gasoline, groceries, and just about everything else.

But I am a cheapskate at heart, who refuses to pay more than I have to for anything.… Read more

This selloff has gone on seemingly forever, and I’m hearing from more investors who are feeling nervous.

I understand completely. Days of red on the indexes are tough on all of us, myself first and foremost. But the key thing to keep in mind as the world seems to be spinning out of control is that when times like these come along, our CEF strategy proves its worth, for two reasons:

• Our CEF dividends are helping us through the correction, as they have for all the pullbacks we’ve been through since we launched my CEF Insider service in 2017. Our portfolio yields 8.3% today, and 17 of our 23 holdings pay dividends monthly, so those payouts arrive in line with your bills.

For decades, plain vanilla financial advisors have pitched a “4% withdrawal rate” as a retirement solution. Most were lazily stealing this advice from the smart, thrifty fellow who created the rule.

The 4% idea is that someone with, say, a million-dollar nest egg could safely withdraw $40,000 per year and probably not run out of money before they die. Or, at least, have it last for 33 years.

(And oh, by the way, they’d better hope that the financial poem keeps rhyming with a previous 50-year period. But I digress…)

Not the most inspiring idea, I know. So why are we even talking about this today?… Read more

Think back just four months: first-level investors were babbling on about “transitory” inflation and clambering for crypto and profitless tech stocks.

No more! The world has shifted. Russia’s war on Ukraine—a disaster on a human level first and foremost—has upended, well, everything.

Crappy crypto and bankruptcy-bound techs are out—and secure payers that benefit from today’s trends are in. (I’ve got three examples for you below, one of which has boosted its payout 119% in just the last five years.)

Secure Payers Thrive in a Volatile World

Let’s be honest: the Fed, Putin and President Xi of China are driving the market now.… Read more

When we’re faced with a situation like today’s, with inflation and interest rates on a tear, we want dividends that keep us ahead of rising prices while hedging us against volatility.

Luckily, there’s a selection of high-yield closed-end funds (CEFs) that do just that. We’re going to look at three that yield 9.9% on average today, plus they give us the diversification we need to withstand market shocks.

And with a 9.9% yield, you could use these stout income generators to pay your bills on a modest investment, avoiding the need to sell into a downturn to augment your income. Heck, a retiree with $500K could generate $4,125 a month in dividends!… Read more

The bond market is blowing up many retirement portfolios. Let’s make sure yours is outrunning inflation, rates, and everything else—with these yields up to 25%.

(That’s not a typo. We’ll talk 25% dividends in a moment. First, let’s address the fixed-income elephant in the room.)

The 10-year Treasury is rapidly running towards 3%—a level it hasn’t hit since 2018. The Fed’s hawkish stance has created a mass exodus in bonds, sending the T-note up from 1.5% at the start of the year to nearly 2.9% in just a few short months.

Now, that’s definitely no reason to start jumping into government debt.… Read more

If you’re looking for reasons to toss and turn at night, there seem to be plenty these days…

Ever-rising prices and ever-shrinking inventories of key goods, from energy commodities to microchips.

The first period of tighter monetary policy in the US in over two decades.

A bloodbath for some of the biggest names in tech, as evidenced by the latest tailspin for Netflix just a few days ago.

There’s an old saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results. But many investors seem to be doing just that, fighting this difficult environment with the same old tech stocks like Netflix and the same old index funds that are bleeding red ink in 2022.… Read more

Let’s test the common “wisdom” that a double-digit dividend is unsustainable. The closed-end fund (CEF) we’re going to discuss today turns that notion on its head!

I’m talking about the PIMCO Dynamic Income Fund (PDI), which, as it says in the name, is run by boutique CEF house PIMCO.

We all know that investors (and consumers in general) love a brand name, and that holds true with CEFs, too: due to the prestige associated with PIMCO’s moniker, its funds usually trade at huge premiums to net asset value (NAV).

Well, to be fair, it’s not just the company’s name that’s behind these premiums.… Read more

Will China buy Bitcoin? If I were President Xi Jinping, looking across the Taiwan Strait, I would. Why wouldn’t he want to diversify his $1 trillion pile of Treasuries?

But there’s one thing that Xi—or any autocrat, for that matter—needs more than coins: Real assets with cash flow.

We’ll talk dividend trades that will benefit from these global trends in a moment. First, let’s start with crypto, because (indulge me, please) I need to get caught up on these questions. I’ve been saving a note from Joseph B., who asks what recommendations we have on cryptocurrencies.

Fellow reader Ted F. also asks about crypto, but from the Federal Reserve’s perspective.… Read more

I always laugh when I hear investors say you can’t time the market. Truth is, you can—my readers and I have done it many times! I’m going to show you my favorite way to time the market for big upside (and dividends) today.

The best way is to let you see my system in action. So let’s do that.

Think back to October 2020 for a second. With the market mess that is 2022 dominating the headlines now, you may not remember that we faced a big pullback then—just north of 10%.

It set the stage for us to “swing trade” for payouts north of 7%, and quick 49% upside, too.… Read more