3 Big Dividends (Yielding 7.9%) Built for Post-Election Drama

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Well, that was fast. As you no doubt know by now, stocks gave back their post-election bump nearly as fast as they took it. Now they’re more or less where they started pre-election.

There’s a story behind this “pop and drop” that showed me something we need to bear in mind more and more as we head into 2025 (and a new presidential term): The need to diversify our portfolios, not only within stocks but (especially, with more volatility likely) beyond them.

And that need for diversification goes for our holdings of high-yielding closed-end funds (CEFs), too.

Now, market veterans will no doubt be quick to say that these short-term moves are just noise, and in the long term it doesn’t really matter who is the president.… Read more

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Immediately after President-Elect Donald Trump won his second term last week, the US dollar surged, while US Treasuries fell:

Election Sends Dollar Up, Treasuries Down in Early Trading

Both moves are opposite sides of the same coin: Investors believe Trump’s policies will be inflationary. The theory suggests this would happen for a couple of reasons:

  1. The US government will spend more, and interest rates will rise higher than rates elsewhere in the world in response. That will attract foreign capital to America while making it less attractive for capital to leave the US.
  2. All of that extra capital in America will boost economic activity and demand for the dollar.

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If there’s anything better than monthly dividends, well, we contrarians don’t want to know about it. Getting paid on the same schedule as our bills (monthly!), makes retirement planning easy.

We still need enough yield, though, to get rid (and stay rid) of our day jobs. Our pile of savings is what it is at this point, so we look to larger dividends to do the heavy lifting for us.

The S&P 500, needless to say, won’t cut it. First, the “SPY” pays quarterly—not often enough! Second, it pays 1.2%—not high enough!

“The Market” Is Paying Just Pennies

Even yield-focused funds’ yields are pretty lame right now.… Read more

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What the heck happened last Monday? I know I don’t have to tell you that the market dropped off a cliff, only to float back higher as the week continued.

The media has been saying that it was all about the latest jobs report in the US, which came out on Friday and simply wasn’t that bad—certainly not the kind of result that deserves the response we saw from stocks.

To put it in perspective, the NASDAQ 100’s fall in a single day was worse than what we saw in the pandemic, when the global economy literally shut down.

Despite the rise in the unemployment rate, joblessness is still relatively low historically speaking, companies are defaulting less than a few months ago (and at historically low levels), and the US economy is set to grow well over 2% this year, after strong growth last year.… Read more

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When legendary activist Bill Ackman makes a move, the investment world notices. So when he said he was going to jump into our favorite income plays—8%+ yielding closed-end funds (CEFs)—it certainly got our attention.

We broke it all down in a July 11 article, specifically how Ackman’s latest move—a plan to launch a new CEF with $25 billion in assets under management (making it by far the biggest CEF ever)—was likely to send these funds soaring.

Notice I used the word “was” a number of times just now. That’s because Ackman scrapped the plan just last week.

Ackman’s sudden about-face left many heads spinning in CEF-land.… Read more

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Who is paying a 27% premium for Guggenheim Strategic Opportunity Fund (GOF)?

Don’t get me wrong. GOF is a fine fund, delivering 9.8% yearly returns on its net asset value (NAV) since inception. But we are talking nosebleed valuation territory for GOF. It’s a dangerous purchase at these levels.

Bandwagoners buying today are unlikely to see 9.8% returns. Or anything close. Plus, they are exposing themselves to 27% downside risk because, as we’ll discuss in a minute, GOF eventually finds its way back to par.

How can a premium like this exist? GOF is a closed-end fund (CEF) with a fixed pool of shares.… Read more

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It’s no secret that corporate bonds are booming. But what might come as a surprise to some folks is that we’re not too late to get in. Through a group of well-run closed-end funds (CEFs), we can still tap big corporate-bond yields at a discount.

Even perennially gloomy Business Insider (notorious for its overdone calls for an inflation/recession-driven crash in 2022) acknowledges the terrific environment for bonds right now. Recently, BI had to admit not only that “Corporate bonds are the safest they’ve been in years,” but that this is one of the best bond markets we’ve ever seen.… Read more

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Today we’ll discuss five monthly dividends with yields between 7.3% and 16.7%. But let’s be careful—market participants are showing signs of greed right now.


Source: CNN

Monthly dividend stocks can help settle down a seasick portfolio. First, they pay every 30 days. What a concept! Their payments line up with our bills. Brilliant.

Quarterly payers aren’t as nice. Let’s look at a $500,000 portfolio split evenly among a group of five mega-cap dividend payers. This is a set of wildly popular blue chips you can find in the top 10 or top 20 holdings of just about every major large-cap fund—and despite this, they deliver a downright miserly sub-1% yield!… Read more

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. No, I’m not talking about Dickensian London—I’m talking about the mood among investors in our favorite high-yield investments, closed-end funds (CEFs), these days.

Those of us who know what to look for in CEFs are finding a rich hunting ground of big dividends. Yields are up—our CEF Insider portfolio yields an average of 10.2% today—and we’re in a good position to book longer-term profits due to the big discounts still available. (We can thank the cautious folks who invest in CEFs for that—they’ve been slower to buy back in after the 2022 pullback, due to alarmist media headlines.)… Read more

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The hardest part of convincing folks they can lock in high dividends for the long haul (I’m talking 9%+ yields here) is that many just don’t believe it.

And frankly, I can’t blame them. Too many people are paid a lot of money to tell investors that yields like that are impossible. But the truth is you can get a 9.5% yield today—and even more. But even at 9.5%, we’re talking about a middle-class income of $4,000 per month on an investment of just a touch over $500K.


Source: CEF Insider

Below, I’ll reveal how to start building a portfolio that could get you an even bigger income stream than this today.… Read more

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