This 11.1% Dividend is a Sucker’s Bet

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This 11.1% Dividend is a Sucker’s Bet

Closed-end funds (CEFs) are ready to climb after a two-month decline. In preparation for this pop, select vanilla investors are buying this 11.1% dividend with its 14% downside.

Wait, what?!

Everyone hates bonds today. Yet, somehow, these bonds are selling for $1.14 on the dollar.

I sure wouldn’t do it. I’d favor the fixed income that everyone hates. (More on these discounted dividends in a moment.)

Who is this “I’ll pay a premium” belle of the basic income ball? Convertible bonds. Convertibles pay regular interest. In this way, they act like bonds. You buy them and “lock in” regular coupon payments.… Read more

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My Secret Fund-Picking Plan: 3 Steps for Quick 27% Profits (Part II)

A couple weeks ago, we talked about the “index boomerang effect,” my favorite way to grab fast double-digit price gains in closed-end funds (CEFs).

It’s a simple one-click indicator that can hand you huge price gains on a CEF you pick up today. And those gains are in addition to the huge dividends these funds pay—the typical CEF yields a life-changing 7% today, and plenty pay out even more than that (often monthly, too!).

Here’s how my strategy works: all things being equal, CEFs focusing on a certain asset class (corporate bonds, say) will perform similarly, and will likely outperform their index.… Read more

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The Best CEFs for Rising Interest Rates

Thank you to our 1,578 Contrarian Income Report subscribers who attended our Q1 webcast last week! We received 114 questions during our one-hour call, plus several dozen more beforehand. Amazing.

Thank you for the thoughtful questions. I’ve read each and every one. Let’s chat about popular closed-end fund (CEF) topics today. (Next week, we’ll circle back with your equity-focused dividend questions.)

Q: Brett, what are your thoughts about Calamos Convertible Funds (such as CCD, CHI and CHY), which are currently yielding about 8%? Thank you.

Convertible bonds are a big beneficiary of Jay Powell’s money printing activity. Convertibles pay regular interest.… Read more

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It’s a Bond. It’s a Stock. It’s Both (and It Pays Huge 7% Dividends)

Stocks or bonds? Why choose when:

  1. Stocks pay just 1.5%
  2. Bonds pay just 1.3%, yet
  3. There are little-known hybrid instruments yielding up to 7.9%!

These vehicles aren’t risky. They just happen to be favorites of Wall Street insiders who don’t want income investors like us crowding their favorite trades.

Unfortunately for them, we are not going to apologize for this article in advance. It’s time for us to discuss how to take the 1.5% yield from the S&P 500, the 1.3% yield from 10-year Treasuries—throw each in the trash—and instead type in the “convertible bond” tickers we’re not supposed to know about.… Read more

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6 Dividend Questions for 7%+ Yields in 2021

Thank you to our 1,581 Contrarian Income Report subscribers who attended our webcast last week! My publisher described it as a “firehose of information”—hopefully, that was a good thing!

We have you, our thoughtful reader and income investor, to thank for the inspiration behind the firehose. We fielded 45 questions before the event and another 127 on the call, for a total of 172. Amazing.

As promised, I have read each and every question (as has our excellent customer service team). In the weeks ahead, we’ll discuss as many as I can find white space for. Let’s start with six today.… Read more

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5 Dividends Up to 10.8% to Buy on This Dip

Are you trying to grind out a livable retirement on dividends alone? It’s possible, and it doesn’t require millions and millions already in the bank. (Even today, with interest rates in the tank.)

However, we must step outside the mainstream to achieve this. After all, why mess around with a standard $15,600 a year in retirement income when we can “supersize” that annual yield haul up to $108,000?

The “standard” $15.6K is what we get listening to mainstream financial advisors and pundits, and buying the vanilla ETFs that they recommend. The latter $108K is what we can achieve with a little bit of original thinking.… Read more

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A Proven “Crash-Resistant Strategy” for 7%+ Dividends, 77% Upside

I’m no mind reader, but I’m guessing you’d leap at an investment with the stability of a bond and the upside of a stock right now.

Sounds like something tailor-made for a crisis, right?

The good news is that it’s no pipe dream. These handy “crash-resistant” plays are out there and ripe for buying. We’re going to take a close look at how we can tap them for huge dividends now—yearly cash payouts all the way up to 9.7%!

It’s a retirement strategy every investor should take a look at. Unfortunately, too few even know these “shapeshifter” investments exist.

Lender Today, Shareholder Tomorrow

I’m talking about convertible bonds.… Read more

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5 Dividend Stocks That’ll Keep You From Drowning in Retirement

Your 2% bonds are going to make you broke. You need to buy these safe, higher paying dividends instead.

We’ll get to these “real yields” (up to 9.3%!) in a moment. First, let’s recap. Treasury yields just took their biggest bath in weeks, sending the 10-year T-note to 2%. Less than a year ago, the 10-year was flirting with (a not exactly nosebleed) 3%.

And now that Fed chair Jay Powell has fallen in love with the doves (whether by choice or by force), he’s going to keep rates low for a long time. Which means bonds will have no place in a retirement portfolio geared towards income.… Read more

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