This wild economy has set us up with an opportunity to smartly “time” both the real estate and stock markets—and grab ourselves a hefty 9.9% dividend along the way.

I’ll show you a ticker we can use to do it in a moment. But first, let’s talk about the stock/real estate “two step” I’m proposing—starting with the state of play in the housing market, which has changed a lot in the last few weeks.

House Prices Look to Be Peaking

It comes as a surprise to no one that house prices are on a tear these days, hitting an average of $500,000, according to the latest numbers:

When most Americans buy their primary residence, they aren’t primarily focused on the sticker price; their monthly mortgage cost is what they’re really looking at.… Read more

The stock market keeps falling and falling because, for the first time in 14 years, there is nobody there to catch it.

The “Fed put” has expired.

The genesis of the Federal Reserve’s implicit put—the notion that the Fed will fix any decline—was the 2008 Financial Crisis. The financial system was on the ropes and the stock market itself became “too big to fail” as far as the Fed was concerned. Then-Chairman Ben Bernanke printed a bunch of money, boosted the market and was heralded a financial hero.

Since then, the Fed has been reluctant to let the stock market drop.… Read more

The retirement-income battle never ends! In 2020 and 2021, we were terrified of dividend cuts. Now we’re sweating soaring inflation!

The good news? No matter what the worry, we can apply my “2-step retirement income plan.” It’s designed to keep anything Jay Powell, Vladimir Putin or even Chinese President Xi does from impacting our dividend streams.

(Below I’ll give you two tickers that work perfectly with this strategy, including one that profits from the demise of Russian oil. This unsung company just hiked its payout 50%.)

Inflation Sideswipes Retirees

Of course, this market crash is mainly the work of Powell, who overshot the mark on stimulus, boosting the money supply by a ridiculous 40% since February 2020.… Read more

Most investors I speak to have no idea how much they’ll need to retire (and with the uncertainty we’re facing today, that’s totally understandable!).

So let’s talk about that—and focus on closed-end funds (CEF), totally overlooked investments that could let you retire on dividends alone, possibly on as little as $325K. That’s the ultimate way to get peace of mind these days, because you don’t have to worry about selling into a pullback to keep your income stream intact.

The Income Side

When calculating how much you’ll need to clock out of the workforce, you really only need to know three things:

1. How much you’ll spend in your first year of retirement.

Mid-cap dividend stocks are the best bargain on the board right now. I love them because lame income investors don’t consider them. They fixate on:

• Large-cap stocks: For dividend safety.
• Small-cap stocks: For dividend growth.

Meanwhile many great under-the-radar mid-cap stocks sit between $2 billion and $10 billion in market capitalization. They sit in a “sweet spot” that accommodates dividend safety and growth.

Which is why they generate big returns.

Touchstone Investments reports that, when looking at 20-year rolling returns, mid-caps have experienced “typically higher absolute returns during the last 42 years”:

Source: Touchstone Investments

It’s easy to overlook these names—the media doesn’t talk about them as much, and they tend to have far less analyst coverage than the Apples (AAPL) and Microsofts (MSFT) of the world.… Read more

There’s a famous experiment called “the marshmallow test.” In it, scientists give little kids a marshmallow along with a choice: Eat the treat immediately, or wait 15 minutes to get a SECOND marshmallow to snack on.

The test has been repeated several times over the years, and the results are pretty simple: Kids who delay their gratification for bigger rewards are typically more successful and more well-adjusted in the long run.

And let’s face it, we all know kids who wouldn’t even listen to the instructions and simply stuff that marshmallow in their face as soon as the adult leaves the room.… Read more

Let’s talk about last Friday’s market crash and the wobbly markets we’ve seen since. Because at times like this, our closed-end fund (CEF) dividends are a key tool to help see us through.

As seasoned CEF investors know the standout strength of these 500 or so funds is their high payouts, which yield around 7%, on average today. Payouts like those can tide us over until we get to the other side of a market meltdown.

So what’s our strategy? In CEF Insider, as with all of our Contrarian Outlook premium newsletters, we’re staying light on our feet, ready to sell struggling holdings quickly, and to pick up bargain-priced dividend payers when they appear.… Read more

In bull markets, we buy the dips. In bear markets, we sell the rips.

Starting in spring 2020 and through 2021, we dividend investors stayed in “buy the dip” mode. Granted, 2020 seemed like a strange time to want to invest. But the Federal Reserve had our backs.

Heck, Fed insiders knew it. In late February 2020, Vice Chair Richard Clarida sold $1+ million in stock shares—and bought them a few days later on the eve of a certain “central bank announcement.”

The proclamation? That the Fed was prepared to print as much money as it needed to! In order to float the stock market (ha!)… Read more

Let’s not fall in love with our dividend stocks—as this can be a big mistake in a dumpster-fire year like 2022. We must be ready to toss “paper” payer tigers out and move into safe dividends poised to “front run” the next big market shift.

(I’ve got three tickers that are smart plays to swing into now, with yields up to 8.4% and payouts that have surged up to 55% in the last five years, taking their share prices along for the ride.)

“Buy-and-Hopers” Get Crushed

Before we go further, let’s take a moment to keep “buy and hold” investors in our thoughts—or as I like to call them, “buy and hope” investors, who sit tight for years, usually in an index fund, hoping for gains.… Read more

Today I want to show you how to do the unthinkable and retire in seven years—starting with a $0 nest egg. Our plan hinges on two things: being frugal and investing in closed-end funds (CEFs), which throw off big, steady dividends on the regular.

I know a plan like this sounds impossible. Stocks, after all, are testing 52-week lows; the Fed is quickly raising interest rates; inflation is still on a tear; and a war is raging in eastern Europe.

To be sure, these things are all weighing on the markets now. But there is one great thing about investing these days, and it’s on the income side of things.… Read more