Let’s talk about companies that are serious about dividend hikes. I’m talking about recent payout raises of 25%, 67% and even 120%.

Know what happens to a stock that raises its dividend like this? Its shares skyrocket.

Consider Graco (GGG), a company that specializes in fluid-handling systems, serving everyone from homeowners and contractors to industrial and manufacturing businesses. Graco.com delivers one of the most beautifully boring boasts we’ll ever read, showing us the many mundane ways GGG has become a fixture in our lives:

“We pump peanut butter into your jar, and the oil in your car. We glue the soles of your shoes, the glass in your windows and pump the ink onto your bills.

Here’s an idea that might sound just a little bit odd at first: You can actually get retirement-investing advice that’s too conservative.

That may not sound like a bad thing, right? After all, who doesn’t want to be extra sure they have enough to clock out?

The problem with this, however, is that being overly conservative has the very real consequence of keeping us in the workforce much longer than we need to be.

I bring this up because I was thinking of the “4% rule”—which points to 4% as the amount of your portfolio you can safely withdraw in retirement—the other day.… Read more

Now that Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell has pivoted towards his “other mandate,” we should take a cue from my six-year-old, who yells from the back seat:

“FedEx!”

For years she has been enamored with the FedEx Corp (FDX) logo. Neither her sister nor her parents are sure why, but the affinity is real. See a truck on the road, yell “FedEx!” loudly to score the point.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that FedEx disappointed investors with a sanguine outlook a couple of weeks ago. The stock corrected lower, as usually does after earnings.

(Seriously, the best time to buy FedEx lately has been right after the company talks to Wall Street and the suits sell their shares.… Read more

Right now, there’s $6.5 trillion in cash sitting on the sidelines—and a big slice of it is about to drop straight into a select group of dividend stocks.

We’re going to “front run” that cash wave today—and set ourselves up for income (I’m talking 6%+ yields here) and gains as this cash wave starts to build.

In a sec, I’ll name two dividend-payers sitting right in the path of this freed-up cash. One is a true “dividend unicorn,” shelling out an outsized 6% payout that grows. The other has doubled its dividend in just the last five years.

Our $6.5-Trillion Dividend Plan

Let’s start by breaking down that $6.5 trillion figure: It’s the amount of cash in parked money-market funds today.… Read more

Closed-end funds (CEFs), with an average yield of around 8%, are terrific for just about any investor—especially those looking to their portfolios to help pay the bills.

Heck, even if you’re not leaning on your CEFs for income, those big payouts are gold—you just reinvest them to boost your portfolio’s value and book an even bigger income stream going forward.

But of course, not all CEFs are great investments, with some best avoided unless they trade at big discounts to net asset value, or NAV, the key indicator of value for these funds. And sometimes even a great fund isn’t the best one to buy, despite a big yield and an impressive record.… Read more

Real estate is great, except for the heavy time commitment, which makes it a non-starter for me. “Brett, can you come over and change my lightbulb?”

No thanks. Tickers only, please.

Which is fine. Enter real estate investment trusts (REITs), which let us invest in not one or two buildings, but usually dozens or even hundreds, for as little as $20 per share or so. Plus the yields can be even better than the fourplex that would ruin my life down the street.

Dividends of 7%, 12% and even 16%. All with a simple ticker that we can tap in from our phones.… Read more

I recently wrote about a trend that’s making income investors excited: After years of failing to produce decent returns, bonds are back.

Media outlets, including Bloomberg, have picked up on this. And my friends who work on Wall Street are talking about bonds more than I’ve ever heard them do so before.

That makes sense, given how strong stocks have been lately. With the S&P 500 up 21% since January as I write this, many folks feel they’re overpriced. That, in turn, makes bonds look more attractive as an alternative.

This is especially true if you’re looking for income; the Federal Reserve has started cutting interest rates and has said it plans to keep doing so.… Read more

How would I invest a chunk of money today? Say $10K or even $100K?

I’d load up on dividend magnet stocks, sit back and watch Fed Chair Jay Powell pump them to the moon!

Want to know what happened the last time the Federal Reserve cut interest rates? The broader market soared 124%! Powell printed so much money that the stocks popped:

Last Fed Rate Cut: Stocks Soared 124%

Today, select dividend stocks are set up for 124%-like returns too. Buying them now is the best way to build wealth. And protect ourselves from inflation.

Yeah, the last time Powell printed money, inflation followed for the first time in 40 years!… Read more

Rate cuts are finally here. So will we actually hit that vaunted “soft landing” everyone’s been talking about?

Well, I’ve got a (contrarian, naturally!) take that I know most people haven’t thought about—especially since last week’s jumbo 50-point rate cut dropped:

What if we hit a “no landing” scenario, where the economy ticks along and inflation comes back?

I’m bringing up that unpleasant idea because, usually in a rate-hiking cycle like the one that just ended, the central bank pushes the Fed funds rate higher until it breaks something. 

But this time, it’s not clear it has.

In fact, when it looked like it finally had—when Silicon Valley Bank and friends crumbled to dust in March 2023—Jay blinked, and pumped liquidity into the market through the back door, a move we’ve referred to as “Quiet QE” here many times before:

The Fed Didn’t Break Anything This Time—That May Be a Problem

With that in mind, last week’s oversized cut was understandable: The Fed has been keen to take its foot off the brake for a while now.… Read more

At my CEF Insider service, a fund’s discount to net asset value (NAV, or the value of its underlying portfolio) is one of the first things we look at when deciding whether to issue a buy call.

That’s because it can tip us off to a bargain-priced CEF, just like price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios do for regular stocks. But as with P/E ratios, the discount to NAV is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to making a buy decision.

The Discount to NAV Is Just the First Step in Our Research …

It’s easy to see why some investors put too much weight on the discount to NAV, though.… Read more