The stock market doesn’t just hand out safe yields up to 11.8%, vanilla money managers will tell you. And they are mostly right—but sometimes wrong.

When these 11.8% dividends are safe to buy, it can really pay to be contrarian.

An 11.8% yield means that a million-dollar portfolio can generate $118,000 in passive income per year. That is a solid six-figure salary to start with.

It is dividends like these that make mREITs (mortgage real estate investment trusts) so attractive. We’ll highlight three today that yield between 10.3% and 11.8%. But first, a business primer.

mREITs: Big Dividend Rewards (with Risks)

Equity REITs own and maybe even operate a number of properties, be they malls, hotels, hospitals or even driving ranges.… Read more

I always have a good laugh when the press talks about our favorite high-yield plays—closed-end funds (CEFs)—like they’re some new thing! Of course, we seasoned CEF investors have long known that these funds, which pay out average dividend yields of 7.5%, are the key to retiring on dividends alone.

(The 20 CEFs in our CEF Insider service’s portfolio do even better than that, yielding 8% as I write this, with the highest payer of the bunch paying a life-changing 9.8%.)

Nonetheless, the media continues to be floored by this news!

The latest occurrence came on February 9, when CNBC ran an article called “Retirees Seeking Income May Want to Consider Closed-End Funds.”… Read more

If you own a bond fund, it’s probably down in recent months. Let’s talk about why and walk through three popular fixed-income ideas from worst to first.

We’ll start with the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT). TLT is the knee-jerk investment that many “first-level” investors buy when they are looking for bond exposure. Unfortunately, there are two big problems with TLT:

1. It only yields 2.1%.
2. Worse yet, its 19-year duration is drubbing its total returns.

Any kid knows that 19 years is “way too long” to hold a bond when inflation is running a hot 7.5%. (Please, somebody get these TLT investors a Contrarian Income Report subscription!)… Read more

There’s a “double shot” of upside waiting for us in real estate investment trusts (REITs) right now, and some of these companies—like the 3 we’ll discuss below—are so stuffed with cash they can’t hike payouts fast enough!

REITs are among our favorite dividend plays because:

• They’re “pass through” entities—REITs own property ranging from apartments to seniors’ homes and malls. They simply collect rent checks, take out enough to keep the buildings in good shape, then hand the rest to us.

• They pay zero corporate tax, so long as they pay out 90% of their net income as dividends. This tax “hall pass” means even more dividends (and faster dividend growth!)

We’ve got a pullback-driven (and tax-free!) dividend opportunity waiting for us now, and we can thank the Fed’s looming rate hikes for it. It’s a “safety first” closed-end fund (CEF) paying a 4.5% tax-free dividend and trading at a rare 8.4% discount to its “true” value.

This opportunity comes our way through municipal bonds, or “munis.” If you follow the market for these bonds, which are issued by state and local governments to fund infrastructure projects, you know that they’ve pulled back this year:

Munis Slip, Giving Us an “In”

A 2.9% drop, as we see here in the iShares National Muni Bond ETF (MUB), the benchmark ETF for the space, is small compared to the much bigger declines in stocks, but this is pretty rare: as an asset class, muni bonds are less volatile than other kinds of bonds, let alone stocks, which is why any short-term drop tends to be a buying opportunity.… Read more

Nearly two years ago, our Contrarian Income Report service picked up cheap oil dividends that, at the time, yielded nearly 11.8%. With oil trading at negative prices (meaning producers were paying people to take barrels off of their hands), our purchase didn’t feel warm and fuzzy. But then again, most successful contrarian trades don’t.

We recognized that oil prices were likely in the midst of a “Crash ‘n’ Rally” pattern. This is an oil-price phenomenon that has played out several times before.

We discussed this back in 2021:

Energy prices tend to “crash ’n’ rally.” The crash is quick, while the ensuing rally lasts for years.… Read more

One of the best things about closed-end funds (CEFs) is that, even though there are only about 500 or so of these 7%+ yielders out there, you can find CEFs that win in every kind of market.

So with a few clicks, you can build a diverse CEF portfolio yielding well north of 7%. (The 20 holdings in our CEF Insider service’s portfolio, for example, yield 7.7% on average and hold everything from tech stocks to municipal bonds and real estate investment trusts, or REITs.)

Below I’ve got an 8% monthly dividend payer that’s primed for “snap-back” upside as one group of stocks—those that sell discretionary products, from electronics to clothing—spring back to life.… Read more

I have no idea why “income” investors mess around with dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPs). Most don’t yield enough to matter.

If the goal is to retire on dividends, why not “automatically” bag a 10%+ income stream and 100%+ upside?

Better yet, this outsized cash flow drops into your account—and grows—every single month!

It takes almost no work. (Just one small, but potent step, which I’ll show you shortly.)

Before we get to that, let’s look at just how easy it is to use this proven strategy to double—and even triple—the cash stream your portfolio is throwing off today.… Read more

Let’s set ourselves up for some quick 61%+ returns—and accelerate our dividend growth—by “front-running” stocks that are about to split their shares.

I call this my “Dividend Triple Play” strategy because, as you’ll see in a moment, it uses three critical indicators: a looming share split, dividend growth and share buybacks, to propel us to serious gains and payout hikes.

Members of my Hidden Yields dividend-growth service recently benefited from this setup—and it helped them walk away with a sweet 61% return!  It’s easy to repeat, and I’ll even give you the ticker of another stock that could be our next high-flying “dividend splitter” below.… Read more

We’re seeing signs every day that this pouting market is way oversold—and contrarians that we are, we’re going to work this sentiment to grab stout closed-end funds (CEF) paying dividends yielding north of 7% that have been unfairly beaten down.

Here’s my take on how far off-base today’s investor mood is. In a moment, we’ll dive into 2 CEFs yielding up to 8.5% we can buy to cash in.

1. Inflation is not hurting corporate profits. If anything, profits are going up across the board. Many companies have seen their profits—and profit margins—rise in the earnings season that’s currently underway.
2. Supply chains have challenged businesses, but they haven’t caused the economy to grind to a halt.