Closed-end funds (CEFs) are the ultimate “sleeper” investment—if you hold them, you know they hand out massive dividends (7% yields, on average!). Plus, their often-discounted share prices set you up for serious upside, too.

But it looks like the mainstream crowd is about to crash our CEF party. That means if you’re not in now, this is the time to climb aboard, before our CEFs’ big discounts become a distant memory.

CEF Managers Put Out the Bait

Funnily enough, the ones drawing attention to CEFs these days are CEF managers themselves. According to The Wall Street Journal, these pros have been cutting their fees in a bid to draw in new investors.… Read more

Is this a quick (buyable) blip? Or the next bear market?

While the Wall Street suits guess away, we can do better than the buy and hope crowd. After all, why hope when we can secure our retirement with sustainable cash flows? I’m talking about yields of 6%, 7% or even 8% or more that barely blink when the markets melt down.

These investments are easy to buy. In fact, we purchase them just as we would a mere “common” stock. But here, we’re looking past the obvious to purchase these preferred payouts (yielding 7.4% on average, we’ll talk tickers in a moment).… Read more

When I ask closed-end fund (CEF) investors what they like most about these funds, their answer is almost always the same: the dividends!

It’s easy to see why. The average CEF yields 7.1%, and that majority of the 500 CEFs in existence pay dividends monthly. Those two strengths put you miles ahead of someone who bought the average S&P 500 stock, with its pathetic 1.6% payout.

CEF Dividends Reign Supreme

Source: CEF Insider

With a 7.1% dividend, you’d collect just under $50,000 in annual income on a $700,000 investment. Compare that to a popular index fund like the 1.6%-paying SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY): you’d need over $3.1 million to collect the same $50,000 of income!… Read more

Looking for a few safe bond funds to park your cash in, earn a bit of yield from and (most importantly) not lose your shirt on?

I’ve heard from several subscribers who are looking for a safe dividend port in these renewed storms. Well, there aren’t many, but I’ve got a few ideas for you here! We’ll discuss them in a minute. First, let’s talk about the sudden change in weather.

Early last week, the VIX—the measure of volatility that everyone knows (and few can explain!)—mysteriously started popping higher. This was a bit curious because the VIX and the S&P 500 had been mirroring each other.… Read more

There’s a joke going around that the S&P 500 isn’t the S&P 500 anymore. It’s now the “S&P 5.”

(Well, last Thursday, the five got punched in the face. With no meaningful dividends to cushion the fall, it was all “red on the screen.”)

I’m talking about the five mostly dividend-less stocks that have been driving the rebound since March—tech darlings and low/no yield wonders Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon.com (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB).

Rebound Leaves Dividend Investors Behind

If you’re not holding these big names, or if you only have a small position, well, the joke’s been on you (with the exception of last Thursday, of course!).… Read more

It’s the million-dollar question these days: how can this market be up double digits in an economy like this? And how can we dare hope for even a little more upside from here?

S&P 500 Defies Gravity

The truth is, there are plenty more gains to be made. But to get them, you need to look just a little beyond the big-name stocks most people limit themselves to. One overlooked place where there are still plenty of bargains (and outsized dividend yields!) to be had is in closed-end funds (CEFs). We’ll take a look at a high-yield CEF that offers you the perfect mix for today’s market—upside potential, downside protection and an outsized 7.2% dividend stream—in a bit.… Read more

I dig dividend stocks that keep a low profile. Forget the front-page financial headlines. I’d prefer to own a high paying stock as it’s making its way from page 16 up to page 1!

That’s when the real money is made, and the highest yields are banked. These under-covered stocks give us a “two-fer” benefit. A lack of media and analyst coverage allows you and I to exploit dirt-cheap prices, unlocking far more potential than if we chased them once everyone else started to notice them.

Better still, low prices in unexplored areas of the market equal juicy yields. Imagine squeezing 10.1% from the real estate biz.… Read more

Sometimes, picking the best contrarian stocks can be fairly straightforward.

For instance, back in early spring, it seemed obvious to anyone who went a bit deeper than the daily headlines to see that the market wasn’t giving tech stocks their due, given its importance during the lockdown and its potential for big post–COVID-19 growth.

So in April I wrote an article that highlighted the Columbia Seligman Premium Tech Fund (STK), a closed-end fund (CEF) primed to benefit from surging online shopping, rising mobile data use and the fast shift toward working from home. Plus, STK yielded an outsized 9.4%, so you were getting a large part of your profits in dividend cash.… Read more

Since March, central banks around the world have flooded the globe with newly printed money. As usual, we went “big” here in ‘Merica, with $3 trillion and counting flooding into everything from tech stocks to gold to bonds.

Who exactly is buying a US Treasury yielding 0.7%? Perhaps rich guys and gals with $10 million or more in the bank. Even then, these bonds are paying just $70,000 annually on that ten-mil! Which means a wealthy bond bull must tap into some capital or kiss that country club membership goodbye.

The Federal Reserve, of course, a big buyer. It’s distorting the market and keeping interest rates low, to the benefit of corporations but the chagrin of retirees.… Read more

These days, I’m hearing from a lot of folks who are pretty nervous, bracing for yet another round of dividend cuts to hit them out of the blue.

It’s understandable. Recently, we’ve seen plenty of dividend “sacred cows,” like Wells Fargo (WFC), mall landlord Simon Property Group (SPG), and senior-care operators Welltower (WELL) and Ventas (VTR) cut or eliminate their payouts.

In the second-quarter of 2020, 244 firms increased their dividends, according to Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices. That sounds good until we see that 639 companies decreased their payouts. In other words, dividend investors were two-and-a-half times as likely to receive a pay cut as they were a raise.… Read more