Here’s my take on the DeepSeek selloff we saw last week: It’s a buying opportunity, especially for income investors.

(I wrote a bit about this in last Thursday’s article. Since the market has rebounded a bit since, we’re going to talk about it more today. A preview? It’s not too late to buy the dip.)

Income Investors: 2, Speculators: 0

Why do income investors hold an edge here? Because they have a chance to buy NVIDIA (NVDA) and other AI stocks, including some private-equity firms few people have access to, through closed-end funds (CEFs).

Tapping the selloff this way gives us two key benefits:

1. Big dividends—the two funds at the heart of our strategy yield an average 10.4% when we buy them as a set.

This week’s AI panic has opened up a rare bargain window in big tech names that were disposed of with the DeepSeek bathwater.

Nosebleed Nvidia (NVDA)—which we warned about here and here—is a “stay away.” But there are tech dividends worth exploring, with some paying us up to 13% a year.

Investors have been herded into the same AI and technology names that have been at the forefront for years, and—shockingly—those shares have largely been priced for perfection.

Chinese AI upstart DeepSeek has shown that deep pockets are not needed to build smart AI models. This should have come as no surprise, as China is home to many smart technologists.… Read more

BlackRock is making changes to some of its highest-yielding funds. Today we’re going to zero in on a 13%-yielder that’s at the center of the action: the tech-focused BlackRock Innovation and Growth Term Trust (BIGZ).

Yes, the fund focused on tech. So the pullback in American AI stocks on news that Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek, which was launched earlier this month, can rival the latest version of Open AI’s ChatGPT, factors in here, too.

BIGZ is a closed-end fund (CEF) with nearly $2 billion in assets under management—enormous for a CEF (The “BIG” is right in the ticker, after all).… Read more

PIMCO recently cut the dividends of two of its popular closed-end funds (CEFs). Shareholders took a bath and, honestly, none of this was a surprise to us careful contrarians.

The payout cuts themselves were not the reason for the bludgeoning. PIMCO Strategic Income Fund (RCS) reduced by 22% but still yields 7.4%. PCM Fund (PCM) cut by 20% yet it pays 11.5% post-chop.

Yet shareholders down 13% and 12% respectively in the past month are now searching for meaning in their empty dividend lives. Fast double-digit losses are obviously not what these income-hopeful investors signed up for.

Alas, hope is never a good strategy and those that were burned obviously did not research these paper payout tigers in Contrarian Outlook.… Read more

Trump 2.0 has exploded out of the gate, and we’re quickly lining up the best bond buys in response—including an 8.8% payer we’ll dive into below.

“Bond Vigilantes” May Return (But We’re Not Waiting Around)

“Wait, we’re buying bonds now?” you might be thinking. “Aren’t inflation and rates going to tick higher in the new administration?”

It’s a reasonable question. And yes, when rates go up, bonds go down. That’s just the way it works in bond-land.

Tariffs are on the way. Ditto mass deportations. And last I checked, the federal government was running a $2-trillion deficit. (And let’s be honest, DOGE or no, politicians are in no hurry to take that problem on.)… Read more

With the new administration now in full swing, market events are coming our way at a furious pace.

One thing that’s clear about the next few years? Volatility is likely to tick up, especially with stock valuations stretched. Now more than ever, we need to be diversified, so we’re set up to offset any shocks to any one sector while we collect our high closed-end fund (CEF) dividends.

So that’s what we’re going to do today. And CEFs are the best tool to do it. Through just three funds (see tickers below), we’ll give ourselves access to some of the top blue-chip stocks, real estate investment trusts (REITs) and high-yield bonds out there.… Read more

What’s better than monthly dividends that add up to 7.2% to 15.4% yearly yields?

Cheap monthlies thanks to a high level of fear amongst vanilla investors.

Source: CNN Fear & Greed Index

We contrarians do our heavy shopping when the crowd is fearful. We have some attractive dividend opportunities today in quarterly payers.

But hey, why settle for every-90-day divvies when we can get paid on the month, every month?

Monthly dividend stocks pay us on the same schedule we receive our bills, which is convenient no matter our age but downright helpful once we hit retirement.

But when it comes to explaining the difference, I find a visual really helps the message sink in.… Read more

We hear a lot of chatter in the business media about productivity these days—specifically how it could decline in the US (and, by extension, hit our gains from stocks—and stock-focused CEFs).

Today we’re going to look at why this fear is overblown, and how we income investors can profit—and collect a 6.7% dividend at a 13% discount—off that disconnect.

US productivity, for its part, rises by about 2% on average per year. As we discussed a couple weeks back, the S&P 500 has posted a 10.4% annualized gain since the late 1980s, and we can say that rising productivity accounts for about a fifth of that, so about a 2% gain in stocks on an annualized basis.… Read more

Tariff Day has left us with Canada and Mexico in the crosshairs. With North American trade in focus, this may actually give a respite to stocks with supply chains elsewhere and light a fire under them.

Today we’ll talk about two dividend growers that have serious upside. One has a supply chain independent of Canada and Mexico, while the other has no manufacturing worries but some misguided RFK fears. The pair returned 138% and 199% during Trump 1.0, and, if history rhymes, the duo could return triple-digits again during Trump 2.0.

Our first stock, Analog Devices (ADI), is down 9% from its recent highs on trade fears.… Read more

We are now officially into Trump 2.0, and here’s the first thing I can tell you:

This new administration will hurt the returns of folks who simply buy an index fund like the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and call it a day.

What we’re now embarking on is a true stock picker’s market—a time when prudent moves into, and out of, individual dividend payers will be key.

That puts holders of SPY, which has to represent the current makeup of the S&P 500 index, in a tough spot. Since it has no manager who can buy and sell as markets shift, SPY holders are locked in as losing stocks cancel out some or all of the ETF’s winners.… Read more