The pullback we’ve seen in the last week calls to mind the last big selloff we saw—in 2022.

That’s what I want to draw your attention to today (but only for a moment!). Because the 2022 experience still has a lot to tell us about how markets really view the possibility of a recession. Along with that, a quick look back can also help us develop our strategy for investing in 8%+ yielding closed-end funds (CEFs) from here.

Back then, the fear was that a combination of inflation and recession would cause stocks to plunge. And plunge they did. In fact, the market gave up on everything.… Read more

“Americans prepping for retirement aren’t watching the markets,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday.

Scotty, please. At least try to pretend you have some connection with reality.

Sure, we income investors have it better than most hopeful and current retirees. We do not rely on stock prices for income, per se. Our dividend portfolios provide us with cash flow that we use to pay our bills.

Imagine living by the “4% withdrawal rule” right now, selling 4% of our stocks every year, hoping we don’t run out of money—while the S&P 500 is dropping 4% every day as Wall Street battens down the hatches for a global recession or worse?… Read more

There aren’t a lot of things we can say for certain these days, but there is one: We dividend investors are far better off than the mainstream crowd!

Consider the unlucky souls who hold “America’s ticker”—my name for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY). I call it that because, well, pretty well everyone owns it (it’s okay if you have SPY hiding somewhere in your portfolio—we don’t judge!)

These poor folks have taken the brunt of the market crash—and they’re getting “paid” a mere 1.4% for the pleasure.

Our Dividend Picks Are Built for Trying Times 

We contrarian dividend investors, meantime, know the value of high, safe payouts.… Read more

I often talk about high-yielding closed-end funds (CEFs) that are great buys because, well, there are plenty of CEFs that are. Yes, even in unprecedented times like these!

That’s because the best CEFs offer three things we love:

• Big dividends, with an average yield of 7.8% across the asset class.

• Bargain valuations, with average discounts to net asset value (NAV, or the value of a CEF’s underlying portfolio) of 5%.
  
  And how’s this for a stat …

• Proven performance, with 94% of CEFs posting positive returns (with dividends reinvested) over the last decade. Ninety. Four. Percent.

Still, every once in a while, a CEF comes across my desk that’s an obvious one to sell (or avoid if you don’t already hold it).… Read more

The only thing I love more than dividends is dividend growth. And ‘tis the season for payout raises as  first-quarter earnings season kicks into gear.

I have my eye on companies that have recently announced dividend hikes of 28%, 52%, even 150%. If we get similar dividend growth this time around, great—more money in our pockets. But just as important is the confidence they’d be communicating with big raises amid an extremely uncertain economic environment.

Regular readers know about my “Dividend Magnet” strategy—three signs that can lead to massive price gains. The most important sign is dividend growth, which is management’s way of saying “We’re growing profits, and we know those profits are going to stick!”… Read more

Most indicators are misleading investors right now, with some looking rosy and others seemingly saying it’s time to panic.

So today we’re going to parse through the noise and look at what’s really going on under the hood of the US economy.

Then I’m going to give you our latest “CEF Insider intel” on what to do with stocks—and funds (specifically closed-end funds) that hold them. We’re also going to dig into one bond fund yielding an outsized 13% that’s set to benefit as uncertainty grows.

Investor “Mood Ring” Says It’s Time to Panic …

Consider the CNN Fear & Greed index, a closely watched sentiment indicator.… Read more

The economy is slowing. And if you believe that these tariff-tapping brakes are going to land us in a recession, these tax-equivalent yields up to 12.4% are for you.

This is the time to recession-proof our retirement holdings. The new administration appears to want to get a slowdown “out of the way” early. Atlanta’s GDPNow forecast says the economy is already shrinking:

Meanwhile the latest University of Michigan consumer sentiment report shows that confidence is falling fast. The index dropped to 57.9 in March—its lowest level since November 2022:

Back then we were emerging from a sharp and painful 10-month bear market.… Read more

Don’t buy into this trade panic—truth is, the market’s “tariff tantrum” is a goldmine for us contrarians. Today we’re going to mine it with two stocks whose dividends are skyrocketing—including one that’s pumped up its payout by 410% in the last decade alone.

Worrying Times Are When Fortunes Are Made

We contrarians know that times like these are when the mainstream crowd makes its biggest mistakes. And those blunders give us the chance to snag the strong, and growing, dividends they’ve tossed in a panic.

Like the first of two stocks we’re going to talk about today. From a first-level analysis, this Ireland-based company looks like it’ll get run over the next time “Tariff Man” holds a press conference.… Read more

In our Thursday article, we talked about a “quiet shift” in the markets, from growth stocks to value—and we named 2 CEFs yielding 9%+ that are primed to profit from it.

Yes, the recent jump in volatility is a big reason for that. So today, we’re going to look at another side of the rotation we’re seeing—a shift from passive investing to active.

Index Funds Are so 2023

As we move further into 2025, it’s getting clearer to me that we’re into a stock-picker’s market. Sitting in an index fund just won’t cut it.

That said, at my CEF Insider service, we’re still bullish on stocks (and stock-focused closed-end funds, many of which hand us 8%+ yields), and we’ll get into two stock-focused funds, along with another that holds preferred stocks—kind of a stock/bond hybrid—below.… Read more

Interest rates are trending lower, which means real estate investment trusts (REITs) are rallying. These “bond proxies” tend to move alongside bonds and opposite rates.

If you believe the economy is likely to continue slowing, then select REITs are intriguing income plays here. Especially those yielding between 7.2% and 13.2%, which we’ll discuss shortly.

As I’ve been saying for a few weeks, the real story is in longer rates, namely the 10-year Treasury. I spelled this out in a recent article.

To recap, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been upfront that he and President Trump are focused on the 10-year Treasury rate (the “long” end of the yield curve), and not the Fed benchmark (the “short” end).… Read more