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

Few people realize it, but there’s a way to get big dividends (I’m talking 6%+ payouts) from popular tech stocks—Facebook (FB), Amazon.com (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) among them.

I know that when most people hear about tech these days, they immediately think the sector is overvalued. It’s easy to see why: tech is the sole driver of the S&P 500’s gain this year. In fact, when you hear people say the stock market is up in 2020, you might want to correct them and say that, in fact, it’s tech, and not the market as a whole, that’s up.… Read more

America’s in a dividend desert, and that’s forcing income hunters to get creative. Are 10.1% paying mREITs the answer?

The S&P 500 hasn’t yielded this poorly (1.7%) in roughly a decade. T-notes deliver a fractional yield. Worse, even areas of traditionally elevated yield are offering just so-so payouts right now. At less than 4% on average, high-yield stocks and real estate investment trusts (REITs) will put retirement investors well short of their income goals.

The good news? A pair of market niches—business development companies (BDCs) and mortgage REITs—can put 3x that amount of money into our pockets.

I recently pointed readers to a “3-click” BDC portfolio yielding 10.9%, which is a little less than the BDC average of 12%.… Read more

I hate to see so many folks buying into the hype and snapping up popular ETFs like the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO).

Not only are they denying themselves a proper dividend (with VOO, you’d need a $3-million nest egg to generate a liveable $40,000 income stream!), they’re missing out on gains, too.

That’s because this is no longer a market you can simply ride with a passive index fund. We’re now entering a new investment world that requires two things:

1. Active management (because the pandemic has sharply split this market into winners and losers) and …
2. More income. With the volatility we’ve lived through, I think you’ll agree that a high cash stream, like, say, the 7%+ dividends you get from actively managed closed-end funds (CEFs) provides a lot more safety than here-today, gone-tomorrow paper gains.

The economy is a mess—and that’s presenting quite the opportunity for these landlords, and contrarians like us. Tenants are still paying, but these stocks are priced like a few are flaking.

That’s not the case. Plus, one firm is about to take advantage of a weak 2020 market to go shopping and secure future cash flows at a bargain.

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are trading at 2020 discounts. Investors trashed these stocks swiftly and thoroughly when they realized April 1, 2020 rent payments were going to be a disaster. But we now have a few months of pandemic landlording in the books, and there’s evidence that some REITs are going to be all right after all.… Read more

We just got two powerful signals that the time is right to move into one of my favorite dividend plays: high-yield REITs (real estate investment trusts).

Before we go further, I can understand if you’re leery of REITs. Lots of income seekers were swept up in the “March Massacre,” when investors realized REITs’ April rent collections would be a disaster. And even though REITs have recovered somewhat, most are still underwater on the year.

REITs Sink, Then Bump Along the Bottom

But don’t take that to mean REITs are down for the count, because this is where our opportunity lies. Truth is, when it comes to REITs, most folks think it’s still March, even though the situation today is far better.… Read more