How These 7%-Yielding Funds Charge $0 in Fees.

Our Archive

Search completed

How These 7%-Yielding Funds Charge $0 in Fees.

Members of my CEF Insider service often tell me they’d love to know a lot more about the people at the helm of closed-end funds—the good, the bad and the ugly.

It makes sense: after all, when you buy a CEF, these folks play a huge role in whether you notch a big gain (and income stream) or, well, not so much.

An Insider’s View

As one of the few analysts who focuses solely on CEFs—especially smaller CEFs, with market caps of $1 billion or less—I’ve had several conversations with managers at CEF companies from across the market.

A common theme?… Read more

Read More

3 “Perfect” Retirement Buys for 8.6% Dividends and Fast 86% Gains

If this were any “normal” time, we’d be able to buy safe bonds and collect enough income on our nest egg to fund our retirements. Unfortunately, this is the “new normal” where the Fed is not the friend of us current and hopeful retirees!

Jay Powell is afraid for his job, which means he’s going to cut rates and keep them low for a long time. This means we must look beyond traditional bonds for meaningful income.

What about blue chip dividend-paying stocks? Well, an 11-year stock market rally has ruined that idea. Anyone putting new money in a pricey dividend aristocrat is “buying and hoping” that the stock continues to levitate while the firm dishes its dividend.… Read more

Read More

How to Rent-a-Dividend-Machine for 6% Yields, 52% Returns (Per Year!)

Nine weeks ago, our fellow income investors were concerned about rising tariff tensions and falling stock prices. (Sound familiar?) So, in late May, we discussed seven dividend payers (yielding 6% on average) that wouldn’t go down if stocks-at-large kept dropping.

The broader markets soon reversed, as they usually do when pessimism is running high. But our defensive dividend machines did even better. Five out of my seven “never go down” plays beat the S&P 500. On average they returned 12.5% (including their big dividends) over the last nine weeks. A percent a week or better will sure boost your retirement account quickly!… Read more

Read More

These 21 Safe Bond Funds Pay Up to 8.5% and Never Go Down

“Brett, give me some bond funds with big yields. And it’d be great if their prices never went down!”

My money manager friend was chasing the holy grail of retirement income. He wanted safe payouts from bonds to balance his clients’ stock exposure.

“How about the Artisan High Income Investor Fund (ARTFX)?” I replied. “It pays a steady 6% or so. And it never goes down.”

Same S&P Yearly Return, Less Heartburn

“The only problem is that it never goes up, either. And that’s prevented me from recommending it to my Contrarian Income Report subscribers.”

Our CIR portfolio holds eight bond funds today (versus ten stocks and stock funds).… Read more

Read More

How I Invest for “Automatic” 7% Dividends, 82% Upside

I have no idea why you’d mess around with dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPs) when you can “automatically” bag a 7%+ income stream and 82%+ upside with the strategy I’ll show you now.

Better yet, this outsized cash flow drops into your account—and grows—every single month!

It takes almost no work. (Just one small, but potent, step, which I’ll show you shortly.)

Before we get to that, let’s look at just how easy it is to use this proven strategy to double up—and even triple up—the cash stream your portfolio is throwing off today.

This simple system looks like a garden-variety DRIP, but it has one simple “hack” that amps up our dividend and sets us up for fast 82%+ upside, too.… Read more

Read More

Here’s How I Pick the Best CEFs for 7%+ Dividends (5 Simple Steps)

Since launching my CEF Insider service in early 2017, the picks I’ve given subscribers have outperformed the broader CEF market—even through the recent market volatility that’s caused just about everything to go down.

The key to this performance is a process of analysis and selection that is both complicated and straightforward. I have a checklist of 52 points I go through to choose the right fund. I apply these one by one, first using some of the broader points to screen funds, then zooming in closer, using more complex analysis to bring you my very best buys.

While it’d take a long time to go through that entire checklist, I want to share with you a five-point system that I use as a springboard for picking winning CEFs for CEF Insider.… Read more

Read More

There Are 17 Better Plays (Paying 7.5%) Than These 998 Bonds

How’s your bond portfolio doing? It should be a rock of stability right now.

Of course we may need to look past prices, which can swing wildly, and focus on net asset values and income, which are more reliable anchors.

For example I’ve been hearing from readers who were concerned that our excellent PIMCO Dynamic Credit and Mortgage Fund (PCI) isn’t “acting well.” Its price has whipsawed around this year, mostly in our favor. But lately it’s pulled back amidst the broader market drama and subscribers are worried the market “knows something” that we don’t.

Let’s put this price volatility in perspective.… Read more

Read More

2 Top Contrarian Buys for the Rest of 2018

Remember seven months ago, when investors were freaking out over North Korea and a future trade war?

They were also wringing their hands over popular volatility funds like the VelocityShares Daily Inverse VIX (XIV), which blew up in February and destroyed millions of dollars of invested cash.

All of these shocks sent the S&P 500 tumbling over 10% in a matter of days!

But if you sold off then, you missed out on huge profits:

The High Cost of Giving in to Fear

This chart makes it pretty clear that dumping stocks on scary headlines is a terrible idea. But that doesn’t stop a lot of investors from making this same mistake over and over.… Read more

Read More

The Secret to 68% Gains (and 8%+ Yields) From… Bonds?

A smart bond portfolio (picked by humans rather than “dumb” machines, of course!) will take the stress out of retirement investing. It’s like an annuity, but better – because we get to keep our capital.

And our Contrarian Income Report portfolio pays us more than any annuity product the big firms peddle to line their pockets with fees. Our handpicked basket yields 7.3% as I speak. And this is pure interest. You don’t spend any of your capital!

That’s right. Your money stays intact – or better. And it can potentially do much better and grow by up to 68% in a couple of years (more on this shortly).… Read more

Read More

This 9.4% Dividend Is a Trap Ready to Spring. Sell Now!

A little over two months ago, in an article for Contrarian Outlook, I spotlighted a nice short-term buying opportunity in the PIMCO Global StocksPlus & Income Fund (PGP).

PGP, with its 9.4% current dividend yield, is one of the most popular PIMCO funds, but it is one with a checkered past. And by checkered, I mean this:

Not for the Faint of Heart!

With up and down swings of 20% and more in a matter of months, PGP is a really volatile fund. And note those big dips in mid-2016 and mid-2017. There’s only one reason why huge drops like those appear for a closed-end fund (CEF) like PGP: dividend cuts.… Read more

Read More

Categories