Bill Gross is one of the great characters in the investment world: flamboyant, bold—and generally disliked by those who worked for him.

But his PIMCO Total Return Fund saw over 9% annualized returns in its first decade, despite being a supposedly “boring” bond fund.

Those gains made Gross one of the most powerful people on Wall Street—so much so that during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 to 2009, the government called on PIMCO to help take care of the toxic assets that had sparked the worst recession in a century.

PIMCO’s Contrarian Subprime Play Paid Off Big

Gross, for his part, did help, thereby helping investors earn even more money.… Read more

I hear that robots are standing by to run the world.

Fine—just have them send us a nice, neat report on our dividends. Preferably daily. Thanks.

Seriously, my fellow contrarian, enough with the hype. I tried, albeit briefly, to use ChatGPT as a research assistant for this column. Really it was a softball that I knew the answer to:

Hello ChatGPT, how much did iShares 20+ Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) drop in 2022?

The answer, of course, was 31%, but the robot hadn’t been fed the info so didn’t know. I lost interest and carried on as usual, “manually” verifying my numbers.… Read more

All the “basic” investors out there are busy chasing this AI-driven rally. It’s like the crypto and meme-stock messes of 2021 all over again!

We’re not following them. Instead, we’re zeroing in on three dividend growers (including one that’s grown payouts 300% in a decade and another that’s yielding 15% for long-term holders) that have been unfairly left behind.

Before we talk tickers, let me say that it’s hard to overstate just how much of this rally is tied to AI. Check out the gains in AI darlings Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL) and especially NVIDIA (NVDA) in less than six months.… Read more

Few folks know it, but there’s a way to tap the surging AI trend for a growing 10% dividend. Better still, this monster “AI-powered payout” comes our way monthly.

That’s a far sight better than what most folks are doing these days: focusing on a handful of dividend paying blue chip tech stocks like Microsoft (MSFT).

There’s nothing wrong with Microsoft, of course. But it does yield just 0.8%, or about half what the typical S&P 500 stock pays. It makes up for some of that with a dividend that’s growing like a weed—up just shy of 200% in the last decade—but what if you want a decent yield now?… Read more

We contrarians profit on analyst dislike.

Note that I did not say like. Dislike is where the dividend money is at!

Analyst ratings are a wonderful buy signal. Vanilla investors purchase payers that are widely liked—and wonder why every downgrade dents their pocketbook.

We don’t care about popularity. Heck, we prefer stocks that are far from being in analyst good graces.

Give us the disgraces. And we’ll collect our dividends while we sit back and wait for the analyst upgrades to follow.

It’s not easy to find the “uncool kids” on Wall Street. The school of S&P 500 is a joke.… Read more

The recession everyone’s been worrying about is still a mirage—and there’s a good chance it won’t become reality for a long time yet. That’s given us a nice momentum play in one closed-end fund (CEF) throwing off an outsized 8.2% dividend.

Here’s what I mean by “momentum” play: the stock market is only now waking up to the fact that the recession appears to be on ice for the foreseeable. Yet at the same time, those recession fears have left us with some terrific discounts in CEFs.

These “delayed reaction” buys—including the ticker we’ll discuss below—won’t last.

I say that because the signs are all there for continued market gains—even if the media is working overtime to tell us otherwise.… Read more

Thoughtful reader Terry K. asks for my favorite utility dividend—specifically why I prefer NextEra Energy Partners (NEP) to Clearway Energy (CWEN):

Would like your thoughts on CWEN vs. NEP. I’ve looked at both and based on numbers CWEN looks to be the better option.

 

It has just raised its dividend.

 

Plus, it is better liked by other analysts.

Analyst ratings are a wonderful contrarian indicator. Thank you for writing in; I bet many of our fellow contrarians are asking the same thing! This is a great opportunity for all of us because it has been too long since we have lauded buying dividends that analysts dislike.… Read more

Our favorite high-yield bonds just hit a critical buying level. It’s time to make our move, and we’re going to give ourselves an edge by “cherry-picking” 10%+ yielding picks from the top bond minds on the planet.

And we’re going to pay nothing to do so!

The Titans of the Bond World Give Us Their Best Picks—for Free

I hate to hear people say the bond world is boring. If you’ve read about it, you know it’s packed with wild characters who’ve racked up massive fortunes.

You can’t talk about bonds without mentioning Bill Gross, the so-called “Bond King,” who basically invented the idea of trading bonds in the ’70s.… Read more

Let’s face it: yields on Treasuries and “regular” stocks are still pathetic! We need much bigger payouts (I’m talking yields of 7%+ here) to fund our lifestyles in these inflation-weary times.

Trouble is, most of us have been conditioned by the media and Wall Street to believe that all yields that big are dangerous. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Case in point: my favorite high-yield vehicles, closed-end funds (CEFs), which hold all the assets most folks own, like blue chip stocks, corporate bonds and real estate investment trusts (REITs). Except when we buy these assets through CEFs, we get much higher yields than we would if we bought “direct.”… Read more

To retire on dividends, we have just two requirements. They are simple, though perhaps not exactly easy:

1. Earn safe, meaningful yields. Five percent is our floor, thirteen is our stretch goal. We’ll discuss five stocks in this dividend range shortly.
2. Keep our principal intact. To do this we’ll focus on “low beta” stocks—shares that move less than the broader market.

Beta says how much (or how little!) an investment moves compared to some benchmark. With stocks, beta is usually going to measure movement against the S&P 500.

Here’s an example. Let’s say a stock has a beta of 0.50.… Read more