Many folks see dividends as just a source of income. But they’re so much more! The two high-yield buys I’ll show you today, for example, are what I like to call “dividend Swiss Army knives.”

(One of these stealth funds pays an unheard-of 9.4% payout today, so you’d be pulling in a cool $9,400 in dividends for every $100K invested—enough to recoup your entire investment in dividends alone in a bit more than 10 years! It doesn’t get much safer than that.)

And yes, I know full well how corny “dividend Swiss Army knife” sounds. But the name works! Because apart from simply paying you a massive income stream, these two funds—closed-end funds (CEFs), to be specific—also:

• Fade your portfolio’s volatility (a key strength in the overbought market we’re facing today).

I’m someone that pays close attention to my surroundings.

My wife calls me ‘attentive,’ and I think it’s a fair assessment given my analytical background.

There’s one thing that always seems to capture my attention.

It’s those giant, bright, colorful shiny billboards that sit on top of every single highway in America.

Ask my wife, and she will tell you about the time that I nearly drove our RAV4 into a pickup truck on Interstate 93 in Boston.

We were heading back from a rural wedding in New Hampshire and only a few miles from home.

And there it was—a half-naked, dinosaur-sized photo of Anna Kournikova (the former tennis player) advertising something…maybe it was Nike or some liquor, I can’t quite remember.… Read more

Since traditional banks have backed off on business lending over the years, BDCs (business development companies) have stepped in. They provided much-needed debt, equity, and other financial solutions to small businesses—and much-needed income to dividend investors.

As an asset class, BDCs yield 8%. We’ll discuss three popular payers—with dividends up to 8.3%—in a moment.

Congress whipped up BDCs with a few pen strokes in 1980, creating a structure that’s incentivized to provide smaller companies with financing. BDCs receive special tax privileges, and in exchange, they must return at least 90% of their taxable profits to shareholders as dividends.

If that sounds familiar, that’s because that same tradeoff is enjoyed by real estate investment trusts (REITs), which were formed the same way, 20 years prior.… Read more

By now I’m guessing you’ve heard of the FIRE movement—you may even know someone who’s following this “extreme” form of retirement saving.

An acronym for “financial independence, retire early,” FIRE advocates look to retire earlier than the traditional age of 65—and I mean way earlier. Some even clock out in their 30s!

They do it by building up a huge cash hoard over a period of years, then making steady withdrawals (with some going by the flawed 4%-withdrawal rule) to sustain themselves. Some keep working during their “retirement”; others clock out entirely.

I was thinking of the FIRE folks this week and wondering how they’d fare if they tapped into the wealth- (and income-) generating power of closed-end funds (CEFs), which boast monster yields, sometimes north of 10%.… Read more

I sold this stock for a 4X return. It was a big gaffe.

Fortunately, my amends—a renewed recommendation—helped careful contrarian readers to 22% profits in just over three weeks!

We’ll talk about their haul in a moment. First, let me come clean with my hiccup.

Twenty years ago, when I was young, naïve, and relatively broke, I piled my life savings into Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS). My massive $500 stake netted me about 25 shares.

DKS had recently gone public. I was completely “dialed in” to the offering, having spent much of my youth combing the aisles of the nearby Dick’s Amherst, NY retail location.… Read more

Today I’m going to give you a shot at the next Texas Instruments (TXN), which has delivered a dividend that’s surged 104% since members of my Hidden Yields service bought it in 2017.

Or the next Jefferies Financial Group (JEF), whose dividend has popped 67% higher in the last year alone. 

The key to breakneck payout growth like this is investing in megatrends that reshape society. Right now, we’re tracking six:

• Technology, as it reshapes all our lives in the COVID era.

• Healthcare, as more people pay attention to their health (and more employers entice scarce workers with enhanced medical benefits).

What if I told you there are 152 funds out there that yield 7%+? And many of these stout income plays are even safer than the typical S&P 500 stock! They hold the household-name stocks we all know, as well as high-quality corporate bonds, senior loans, real estate investment trusts (REITs)—just about any asset class you can think of.

I’m guessing you’d be interested, especially with the S&P 500 dribbling out a pathetic 1.3% yield these days, and 10-year Treasuries paying 1.35% (and handcuffing our cash for 10 years in return!).

So today we’re going to dive into these 152 income juggernauts and tease out three of the best ones (average yield: 7.4%) for you to consider now.… Read more

I typically make a trip out to Las Vegas every couple of years, although the pandemic of late has busted those plans.

I’m a big fan of blackjack; it just always seemed like the one game at the casino I could play where my skills gave me an opportunity to win.

I was sitting at a table at the Tropicana on the Vegas strip a few years back, holed up with four other gamblers, hoping for a slow crawl to a big win at the tables.

I was playing small, only $15 per hand, but I got on a roll that seemed like it couldn’t be stopped.… Read more

Dividend Aristocrats are popular. Too popular, if you ask me.

I’ll concede that the surest, safest way big stock market gains is dividend growth. Over time, stock prices are literally pulled higher by their payouts. Their dividends act as magnets that pull their shares higher and make their shareholders rich.

The Aristocrats have delivered plenty of wealth. Heck, to be admitted to the club they must have a track record of 25 annual dividend hikes in a row. At minimum.

Which is fantastic past performance. Problem is, the stock market looks ahead.

Many of these stocks are slowing down. Some—such as Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Coca-Cola (KO)—have elevated payout ratios of anywhere between 60% to 90%.… Read more

Let’s talk about a fund that seems to tick all the dividend-and-growth boxes we income investors demand.

Low fees? Yep. High yield? How does a 7.7% payout (nearly six times the S&P 500 average!) sound? Low volatility? You got it: this one sailed through the 2020 COVID crash, compared to the pummeling the broader market took.

One thing you should know upfront is that the fund we’re going to delve into today is an ETF, not a closed-end fund (CEF)—though we will talk about an intriguing CEF in a moment, too.

At my CEF Insider service, we don’t usually talk much about ETFs—except to skewer them for their typically low yields!… Read more