The 4.3% Dividend Play That Gets Paid When AI Powers Up

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The 4.3% Dividend Play That Gets Paid When AI Powers Up

Worried about a recession? If so, this “slowdown-resistant” 4.3% dividend is for you.

Unemployment just hit 4.3%, the highest since early 2021. Payrolls keep missing, and revisions keep knocking prior month numbers even lower. Employers are clearly pulling back.

The jobless headlines suggest an incoming recession. Perhaps. A big driver is automation—white-collar work being replaced by AI. Software is cheaper, faster and never calls in sick. That may eventually weigh on consumer spending in our service-driven economy.

But here’s the investing play: while AI is trimming jobs, it’s also fueling a bull market in energy demand.

Over the past few years, AI started as a tech story.… Read more

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A 4.2% “Big Beautiful” Dividend Set to Soar

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB) is now law—and there’s one contrarian move we can make now to profit from it.

I’m not talking about shorting 10-year Treasuries (though that might work, given the inflationary policies “baked in” here!).

Instead we’re going long—on American oil and gas. But we’re not looking at producers. We’re going with pipeline operators like Kinder Morgan (KMI), a holding in our Hidden Yields dividend-growth service, to ride the $3 trillion in stimulus the BBB is about to set loose.

Why? Two reasons:

  1. Strong dividends: KMI pays a 4.2% dividend that grows every year, and …
  2. We get a hedge on oil and gas prices: Most of KMI’s contracts are either “take-or-pay,” under which users are on the hook for the full fee no matter how much product they pump, or “fee-based,” with rates that are fixed no matter what oil and gas prices do.

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Geopolitical Insurance and 8% Payouts: Oil and Gold Divvie Plays

Let’s talk about oil and gold dividends. Whether or not the new peace in the Middle East holds, there are some high-quality dividends worth owning anytime. These generous payers (up to 8%!) provide peace of mind just in case the geopolitical Jenga set gets knocked loose again.

We’ll start with crude, which had rallied to one-year highs. I was originally going to advise not chasing the “Strait of Hormuz” oil rally. Futures indicated (and still do) that lower prices are likely ahead. January 2026 still trades cheaper—suggesting temporary disruption at worst.

Back at home, you’ve probably heard (not least from me, often) that President Trump wants a lower Fed Funds Rate!… Read more

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Earn Up to 9.5% in Energy Yields (Without Binge-Watching CNN)

Let’s talk about energy dividends because, well, you know why. But let’s not chase the headlines.

Let’s focus on energy “toll collectors” that will make money regardless of tomorrow’s geopolitical landscape. Steady cash flows support these 4.2% to 9.5% yields.

This runs counter to the outlook for exploration and production companies, as well as equipment and service providers, which have profits that are tightly bound to the price of energy commodities. These stock prices follow crude oil movements too closely.

Energy infrastructure companies are calmer plays. Companies that own and operate pipelines, processing plants and storage facilities aren’t nearly as reliant on energy prices—they just take a cut whenever oil, natural gas, nat-gas liquids, etc.,… Read more

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“Toll Taker” Energy Stocks: 4 Reliable Dividends up to 7%

One of our old flames, a former Contrarian Income Portfolio holding, has pulled back sharply in recent weeks. Time to buy the dip in this 4.3% dividend? Let’s discuss.

Kinder Morgan (KMI) is a blue-chip energy payer that boasts 79,000 miles of pipelines, which transport crude oil, carbon dioxide and other products, though chiefly natural gas. In fact, some 40% of natural gas produced in the U.S. flows through Kinder’s systems. It also has 139 terminals that store petroleum products, chemicals, renewables, and more.

But venerable though it might be, Kinder Morgan is having a rocky start to the year, courtesy of a nearly 15% slide since its Q4 earnings report in January—and this sudden downturn in price has me eyeballing KMI (and a handful of other high-dividend energy names) again.… Read more

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“Natty” Is Down Big. What Comes Next Is More Exciting.

We contrarians, we’re not ashamed to admit, make our big money dumpster diving for discarded dividends.

When vanilla investors toss trash, it is often our treasure!

I have a hunch this is unfolding in the natural gas market. Prices literally can’t go much lower, which means that eventually they must go higher. Check out this chart—prices are down by 80% in one year!

Nat Gas is Dirt Cheap 

“Natty” prices have fallen from roughly $9 per million British thermal units (MMBtus) to a little more than $2, flattened by unseasonably warm weather and months of dogged supply surplus. Reuters reported in February that “depletion so far this heating season has been around half the seasonal average for the last 10 years.”… Read more

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This 6.2% Dividend Stock Has Staying Power

Like many who are passionate about investing, I am a numbers guy. And like many people who are serious about facts and figures, it’s hard to bite my tongue when I run across egregious errors in financial media that might mislead the investing public.

Here are a few that have irked me lately that you should watch out for:

Stock splits:  Arguing that Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) is different after its July stock split is like arguing that cutting a pizza into more slices somehow changes the quality of the crust. The value of a company or its total profits doesn’t change just because there are more shares (or slices) to go around.… Read more

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Wall Street’s 2021 Dividend Dogs: Buy, Hold or Sell?

Exactly who is retiring on the income from safe bonds in 2021?

You might remember when, once upon a time, the 10-year Treasury was a source of acceptable retirement yield:

  • Thirty years ago, we could get 7% or more for sitting on high-quality U.S. debt,
  • Twenty years ago, we could still gather 6%,
  • Even a decade ago, we were pocketing a respectable 4%.

Today? We can’t even collect a lousy 1% yield!

Buying Treasury Bonds? Congrats—You’re Broke!

Put a million bucks into 10-year Treasuries and we’re banking just $9,500 per year in income. That’s below poverty levels. Yikes.

Things aren’t any better on the stock side.… Read more

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5 Bargain Funds With Safe 11% Yields

If you’ve been on the sidelines as this market grinds higher, you’re probably suffering a severe case of FOMO (fear of missing out).

It’s a terrible feeling, but today I’m going to cure you of it entirely, because it’s not too late to jump in!

The key is to zero in on a group of investments known as closed-end funds.

I’ll tell you about them—and introduce you to 5 attractive CEFs—in a moment. But for now, here’s the upshot: these overlooked, easy-to-buy funds are beating the market, but some are still priced at big discounts to their “true” value.

That means you’re not only going to get a strong return here, but you’ll also get a lot of income, too.…
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