How to Buy Microsoft at an 8% Discount (With a 7.7% Dividend)

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How to Buy Microsoft at an 8% Discount (With a 7.7% Dividend)

When it comes to our favorite income investments—8%+ yielding closed-end funds (CEFs)—there are a lot of misconceptions out there.

It’s critical that we put those right, because they’re causing some investors to miss out on CEFs, and the big (and often monthly) dividends they provide. And I know I don’t have to tell you that in turbulent times like these, high payouts like those are a lifesaver.

Two of the biggest misunderstandings surrounding these funds are:

  • CEFs have higher expense ratios than passive funds, and …
  • You’re better off to buy stocks, such as Microsoft (MSFT), direct, on the open market, than through CEFs.

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Why I Hate Bitcoin (Hint: 0% Dividends) and What I’m Buying Instead

I often get asked about crypto. My response often surprises people: I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.

That might sound odd given crypto’s massive popularity (though many holders are no doubt regretting their buys these days, given the swan dive Bitcoin and its ilk have been on).

Nope, I avoid Bitcoin because I (and readers of my are interested in dividend income. And you won’t find any of that in crypto. Plus it’s far more volatile than we’d like. All of this is why, when we want tech exposure, we look to CEFs holding top-quality tech stocks.… Read more

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AI Is Driving Huge Profits, These Are Best Dividends up to 13%

By now you’ve no doubt heard the argument that AI is a bubble, and there’s no way Big Tech will make a significant profit from it, given the massive amounts of cash they’ve already piled in.

That take is just plain wrong—truth is, the tech giants are already booking profits from AI. And we closed-end fund (CEF) investors can grab our share at a discount—and at dividend rates running all the way up to 13%, too.

This next chart tells us straight-up why the “AI-is-unprofitable” theory is off the mark.

Look at the far left of this chart and you see that communication-services stocks led in profit growth in the second quarter of 2025.… Read more

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These 6.8% Dividends Are Quietly Minting Millionaires

If you’re like most income investors, you’re on the hunt for stocks and funds that can stand up to a storm these days.

So that’s what I’m going to give you below—in the form of three “all-weather” closed-end funds (CEFs) kicking out an outsized 6.8% average yield.

They’ve stood firm through every headwind imaginable—wars, pandemics, inflation, you name it—and have done nothing but profit over the long haul. Through all that, this trio has kicked out annualized total returns (with dividends reinvested) of 15%+ each.

“Shock-Proofing” Your Portfolio, Crushing ETFs

These funds’ stellar returns come from both the sector they focus on—tech—and smart management that’s kept all three going strong.… Read more

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How Investors Got the AI Selloff All Wrong (and 2 Big Dividends to Play It)

Here’s my take on the DeepSeek selloff we saw last week: It’s a buying opportunity, especially for income investors.

(I wrote a bit about this in last Thursday’s article. Since the market has rebounded a bit since, we’re going to talk about it more today. A preview? It’s not too late to buy the dip.)

Income Investors: 2, Speculators: 0

Why do income investors hold an edge here? Because they have a chance to buy NVIDIA (NVDA) and other AI stocks, including some private-equity firms few people have access to, through closed-end funds (CEFs).

Tapping the selloff this way gives us two key benefits:

  1. Big dividends—the two funds at the heart of our strategy yield an average 10.4% when we buy them as a set.

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This 13% Dividend Could Soar on a Little-Reported Buyback

BlackRock is making changes to some of its highest-yielding funds. Today we’re going to zero in on a 13%-yielder that’s at the center of the action: the tech-focused BlackRock Innovation and Growth Term Trust (BIGZ).

Yes, the fund focused on tech. So the pullback in American AI stocks on news that Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek, which was launched earlier this month, can rival the latest version of Open AI’s ChatGPT, factors in here, too.

BIGZ is a closed-end fund (CEF) with nearly $2 billion in assets under management—enormous for a CEF (The “BIG” is right in the ticker, after all).… Read more

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How to Snag 8% Tech Dividends (While Dodging the Next Crypto Crash)

We need to talk about tech stocks. Because, yes, there is a risk of a pullback here. But there’s also a way for us to minimize that risk—and grab 8%+ dividends, plus price upside, as we do so.

First off, let me be clear that when I say “tech stocks,” I’m using the NASDAQ 100 as my benchmark. The index is about 60% tech, compared to about a third for the S&P 500. That higher level of tech exposure has allowed the NASDAQ to handily beat the S&P 500 over the long run (see the purple line below, showing the benchmark NASDAQ index fund).… Read more

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This Understated BlackRock Move Drove a Fast 12% Gain (More on the Way)

One often-overlooked way for closed-end funds (CEFs) to give us a profit boost is for management to buy back a fund’s shares.

By now, buybacks are probably familiar to most investors: With “regular” stocks, buybacks reduce a company’s share count, which boosts earnings per share and other per-share metrics, indirectly boosting share prices.

With CEFs, buybacks have a bit of a different effect. With these high-yielding funds, we want to focus instead on how buybacks affect the discount to net asset value (NAV, or the value of a CEF’s underlying portfolio).

Buybacks, Fixed Share Counts Help Management “Control” CEF Discounts

Members of my CEF Insider service know that we love discounts to NAV because they’re the primary indicator of CEF value.… Read more

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Time to Profit From the 8% “Wallflowers” of the Dividend World

I’ve dedicated my career to closed-end funds (CEFs) because in a way, these high-yield investments saved my life: Using these funds to get an 8% income stream from my portfolio gave me the confidence I needed to quit my academic job well over a decade ago.

I started writing about CEFs after that, mostly out of surprise and confusion: Why weren’t these reliable income plays—which yield 8.2% on average now—more popular?

Well, after over a decade of talking to economists, bankers, fund managers and other experts, I’ve come to realize they should be more popular, and that they probably would be after a big shock to markets made them irresistible.… Read more

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The “Sleepy” 8%-Yielding Corner of the Market Is Finally Waking Up

I’ve been covering closed-end funds (CEFs) for more than a decade. Through that time (and still today!) I’ve been shocked at how many people sleepwalk right past these incredible income plays, and the big dividends (and upside) they offer.

CEFs are publicly traded and highly regulated, like mutual funds or ETFs. The key difference? Big dividends! The 500 or so CEFs out there yield 8.4% on average, and they’ve historically have yielded 7%+.

They work by investing in the kinds of assets most of us own already—stocks, bonds and real estate mostly. They then hand out the resulting profits as dividends.… Read more

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