Serenity Now: 6 Calm Stocks Yielding up to 8.4%

The Contrary Investing Report

Investing and Trading News, with a Contrarian, Sarcastic Twist!

Serenity Now: 6 Calm Stocks Yielding up to 8.4%

New tariffs. A government shutdown. A brutal selloff in the software sector with speculation that AI will eat everything in its wake.

Concerned about a pullback? An outright bear market? Fair enough and, if so, let’s talk about beta.

Low beta stocks are our best friends for surviving a bear market. Stocks with betas below 1 are considered less volatile than the overall market. For example, we’d expect a stock with a beta of 0.5 to drop only half as much as the S&P 500 during a pullback.

Let’s consider low-beta fund iShares MSCI USA Min Vol Factor ETF (USMV), which did its job in the leadup to the “Liberation Day” panic last year.… Read more

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Our 8.6% Dividend Play on a “REIT Revival”

A multi-year disconnect in high-yielding REITs is about to turn on its head. When it does, these solid income plays are poised to shoot ahead of stocks.

I’m talking about a quick reversal of pretty well everything investors thought had REITs left for dead, interest rate trends and the work-from-home shift among them.

Now is the time to buy. And we contrarian income investors know the play:

At times like these, we look to 8%+ paying closed-end funds (CEFs) to reap the strongest dividends and potential upside.

I say this as REITs, long-time market outperformers, have been stuck in an unusually long slump.… Read more

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We Didn’t Start the Fire (But We’re Renting It Out for 12.1%)

“Wheel of Fortune”, Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide

Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz

Hypodermics on the shore, China’s under martial law

Rock and roller, cola wars, I can’t take it anymore

Billy Joel had had it with, well, everything geopolitical when he belted these lyrics to his latest number one hit in 1989. We Didn’t Start the Fire reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for two consecutive weeks, teaching listeners:

It was always burning since the world’s been turning.

And while Fall Out Boy gave us a worthy sequel “cover” of Joel’s hit in 2023 (encompassing Harry Potter to Brexit), the headlines have already lapped them.… Read more

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This “Backdoor” AI Stock Is Betting Big on … Self-Driving Tractors?!

Most people are totally missing the point on the AI trade. To use a hockey analogy (it is the dead of winter, after all!), they’re skating to where the puck is, not where it’s going.

They’re debating whether Meta Platforms (META) or Microsoft (MSFT)—which took a header last Thursday—are spending too much on AI, or whether all of this cash is pumping air into a stock-market bubble. Or whether OpenAI will turn out to be the Netscape of AI—jumping out to an early lead only to lose out to a competitor.

Distractions. All of them.

Big Tech is so 2025.… Read more

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This Top AI Trade for 2026 Pays a Huge 11.6% Dividend (It’s Not a Tech Stock)

If you’re wondering whether the rally in tech stocks is fading, well, it is. 

So if your portfolio is heavily weighted toward the sector (and it very well could be, given tech’s meteoric run), it’s time to shift.

We’re going to look at why the so-called Magnificent 7’s years-long run is set to ease in the months ahead. Then we’re going to go on offense and defense at the same time.

On offense, we’ll look to front-run the crowd into what I see as the next hot sector to benefit from the rise of AI. And for defense, we’re going to make a move to boost our dividend income substantially.… Read more

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4 REITs. 4 Monthly Dividend Programs. 4 Massive Yields of Up to 11.7%

Quarterly-paying dividend stocks? Ha!

We save those for the poor vanilla investors. Give us the monthly payers—those that dish divvies every 30 days.

Today we’ll discuss four monthly payers yielding between 5% and 11% per year. An average yield of 7.9%.

This means a $500,000 investment portfolio can buy this four-pack, earn $39,500 per year in dividend income alone and keep principal intact.

Better yet, the payments show up in neat monthly installments. No need to wait 90 days to get paid. The “checks” show up every 30!

Let’s contrast our monthly dividend strategy with the tried, true and (let’s be blunt) inferior techniques employed by unimaginative Wall Street suits who jam their clients into standard broad-based bond funds (or worse, a cheesy 60/40 portfolio):

The advantages of monthly payers are many:

  1. We cut down on “lumpy” portfolio income.

… Read more

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Recession in 2026? Here’s My Take (and a 9% Payer to Profit)

My prediction for 2026? Strange as it may sound, given the wild headlines we’re seeing pretty much daily, I’m calling for more of the same.

As I said a couple weeks ago, I expect around 12% returns from the S&P 500 this year.

That’s why we’ve been adding to the equity CEFs in the portfolio of our CEF Insider service. Today I want to talk about one of our holdings, in particular: a 9%-payer called the Liberty All-Star Growth Fund (ASG).

We’re zeroing in on this one because its discount to net asset value (NAV, or the value of its underlying portfolio) is the biggest it’s been in three years.… Read more

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From Bank Bloodbath to Pipeline Boom: An 8.1% Yield Escape Plan

“And what can we do to get better shots?”

Your fulltime income strategist and part-time basketball coach asked his team of fifth and sixth graders for their ideas. Or, at least, tried to.

Then a ball bounced. After coach specifically said hold balls for a second time. This third infraction ended the conversation.

“That’s it—on the line. Start running.”

When coach says run, the players don’t really have a choice. Get moving in practice or lose playing time in the games they all love.

Likewise, when the government tells an industry that there is a cap on their profits, well, they’d better get moving too.… Read more

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AI? Venezuela? This 5.9% Divvie Is in the Thick of It All (and Thriving)

Natural gas prices are ripping. And we’re going to play it through a “contrarians-choice” 5.9%-payer whose stock is headed in the other direction.

This is a perfect contrarian setup, and I don’t expect it to last.

I’m talking about Enbridge (ENB), whose share price has lagged in the first few weeks of 2026, even as gas prices went to the moon:

Gas Soars—and Enbridge Gives Us an Opening

To be sure, this gas-price spike is driven by the arrival of a “generational” winter storm here in the US. But it’s a sign of things to come, as gas demand is not going anywhere.… Read more

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This 11% Dividend Aces Our 3-Step “Buy Test”

There are plenty of reasons to buy closed-end funds (CEFs), but the one that most investors love most is pretty obvious.

The income!

The average CEF yields 8.6% as I write this. And while most investors have been conditioned to believe that this level of payout is unsustainable, this is not the case with CEFs. Many of these funds sport yields of 8% or more and haven’t cut payouts in years, even decades.

In fact, several have grown their dividends in that time.

The reason why is simple: The stock market gains around 10.6% per year on average. So a CEF that invests in stocks and pays 10.6% per year can maintain payouts, theoretically, since the fund is just handing that profit to shareholders as a dividend.… Read more

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