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

Contrary to popular opinion, we shouldn’t believe everything we read online. Even simple tasks such as counting dividends are often mishandled by our internet overlords.

Mainstream financial websites such as Yahoo! Finance and Google Finance should know better. Check out the misinformation they are spreading about our beloved PIMCO Dynamic Credit & Mortgage Income Fund (PCI). 

We added PCI to our Contrarian Income Report portfolio five years ago. If you bought PCI then, you’ve enjoyed $12.19 in dividends off an initial entry price of just $18.42. That’s a 66% “cash return” on our investment already!

But the charts provided by Yahoo and Google lost track of these dividends.… Read more

Do yourself a favor and shut out all the “experts” who say it’s impossible to retire on dividends alone. They’re just plain wrong! Because even today, with stocks soaring (and dividend yields in the tank), you absolutely can build a portfolio yielding a solid 7%+.

We’re going to do it now, and we’re going to do it easily—with just three funds. These funds—part of a unique asset class called closed-end funds (CEFs)— pay 7.6% between them, and the biggest yielder of the bunch throws off a huge 8.7% payout!

And they’re just the start.

A 7.6% dividend yield is enough to pay you $38,000 a year on just $500K invested, and you wouldn’t have to draw a single penny of your principal to get that cash stream.… Read more

It pains me when I see regular folks take the flawed “advice” to simply plow their money into an index fund and call it a day.

The biggest problem with this “strategy” is there’s basically no income: the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) yields just 1.2% today, so you’d need a million-dollar portfolio just to generate a pathetic $12,000 a year in dividends!

Poverty-level income on a million bucks! That’s unacceptable. And it’s precisely why I’m going to share a much better option with you—yielding an mammoth 7.8%—in a moment.

I was thinking about the “lazy” ETF strategy recently when I was reading a blog post by fintech startup Acorns, which suggested going with an ETF like the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI), which invests in a whopping 3,935 US companies of all sizes, and combining it with the Vanguard Total International Stock Index (VGTSX) for international exposure.… Read more

The big data explosion is finally here.

We’ve gone from no phones, to flip phones, to iPhones that let you buy groceries, make a stock trade, or even watch a movie on Netflix.

We are all using our phones more often and consuming more and more data.

In fact, mobile data usage has increased by nearly 60% per year for the last fifteen years!

Source: AMT Investor Presentation

It is however the advent of new technologies that have helped improve our access to things that might have once been considered unimaginable.

Enter 5G, which is known as the ‘fifth-generation mobile network’, and the newest technological evolution which will greatly improve speeds (up to 100x), responsiveness, and the ability to connect more devices.… Read more

Cheap stocks are fun. We can buy a lot of shares without shelling out too much dough.

Generally speaking, most single-digit stocks are “cheap for a reason”—they are losers. But we contrarians leave no discarded stone unturned. Especially in our search for dividends that we can retire on.

There are a few inexpensive stocks that actually pay. And a select set of them that are even worth buying for their dividends.

In a minute we’ll discuss five “economy lot” yield plays that pay from 6.3% to 11.8%. These are all single-digit share prices that sell for $9 or less today.… Read more

If anyone tells you that all the big dividends have been bought up in this inflated market, do yourself a favor: tune them out.

Because while stocks are up—and dividend yields are down as a result—there are still high, cheap payouts to be had out there. And we closed-end fund (CEF) investors know exactly where to find them. In a moment, we’ll nail down a couple of funds that are still attractively priced today, and they pay you 6%+ dividends, to boot.

That said, deals certainly aren’t falling out of trees in CEFs these days—we have to dig deeper to uncover them than we ever have before.… Read more

“Regular” REITs typically buy physical properties, find someone to manage them, and lease them out. They collect rent checks and avoid paying taxes on most of these profits if they distribute 90% of their profits as payouts. This is the reason REIT stocks typically boast big yields.

Mortgage REITs (mREITs), on the other hand, don’t own buildings. They own paper. Specifically, they buy mortgage loans and collect the interest. How do they make money? By borrowing “short” (assuming short-term rates are lower) and lending “long” (if long-term rates are, as they tend to be, higher).

This business model prints money when long-term rates are steady or, better yet, declining.… Read more

If you’re worried the stock market is too expensive, well, I agree with you. This is why we’re going to discuss my two-step “12% Dividend Plan” today—so we can bank big yields without having to worry about a pullback.

Best of all, we can collect this income without having to sacrifice principal. In fact, our nest egg will generate some nice upside in addition to these big dividends.

But first, a reality check. A yield north of 12%? How the heck is that possible?

I realize it sounds like a pipe dream—especially with the S&P 500 trading at a nosebleed 31-times earnings and yielding a miserly 1.3% as I write this.… Read more