This 8.5% Dividend Is the “Comeback Kid” of 2025

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This 8.5% Dividend Is the “Comeback Kid” of 2025

We contrarians love a beaten-up corner of the market—especially these days, when cheap stocks (and funds) are so thin on the ground.

Right now, real estate investment trusts (REITs) are that corner of the market: unloved, cheap and boasting high, stable dividends. And they have even more appeal with interest rates stabilizing and likely to move lower over time.

We’re not taking advantage of this opportunity by purchasing our REITs individually or through an ETF, though. Instead, we’re looking to REIT-holding closed-end funds (CEFs). These income machines, kicking out 8%+ dividends, are no less than my top contrarian income plays for 2025.… Read more

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How a 7% Dividend Yield Became Oversold

I have to laugh when I hear a pundit say that individual investors can’t beat the S&P 500 (and you and I both know this is something we hear quite regularly!).

Truth is, it’s not that hard. Heck, you really only have to choose an ETF from a different sector, like real estate investment trusts (REITs)!

REITs Beat Stocks in the Long Run

As you can see, these “landlords”—shown by the performance of the benchmark SPDR Dow Jones REIT ETF (RWR) in purple above—have easily outpaced the S&P 500 for the 20 years following the ETF’s inception back in 2001.

That outperformance occurred even with the subprime-mortgage crisis (which was obviously real estate focused) and the pandemic selloff (which hit REITs particularly hard, shuttering malls, warehouses and offices across the world).… Read more

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This 8.3% Dividend Is Cheap (And Will Rise on Overblown Rate Fears)

Since last week, markets have been hamstrung by the fear that inflation is going to hang around. So we (naturally!) are going to make a contrarian play on this overdone worry.

How? By picking up high-yielding closed-end funds (CEFs) focusing on real estate—particularly real estate investment trusts (REITs). Many of these are discounted now.

I’ll show you why this timely move is our route to locking in a steady (and monthly paid) 8.3% dividend in just a moment

First, let’s break down the so-called “bad” inflation number that came out last week, because there are some quirks about it that are easy to overlook.… Read more

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Sell Now! 20 Dicey Dividends for 2024

I don’t want to be the messenger of bearish news to kick off the new year. But, as a card-carrying contrarian, I can’t help it either.

We should sell our dicey dividends now. While the market is high.

The best time to buy was October, when vanilla investors were fearful. We discussed “backing up the truck” to buy anything and everything week after week after week.

CNN’s Fear and Greed Index (FGI) had bottomed out at 16 out of 100, an Extreme Fear reading only seen during stock market panics:

1 Rally and 3 Months Ago: Extreme Fear

Meanwhile the bastion of basic financial thinking, MarketWatch.com,… Read more

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Sell Now! 20 Dicey Dividends for 2024

I don’t want to be the messenger of bearish news to kick off the new year. But, as a card-carrying contrarian, I can’t help it either.

We should sell our dicey dividends now. While the market is high.

The best time to buy was October, when vanilla investors were fearful. We discussed “backing up the truck” to buy anything and everything week after week after week.

CNN’s Fear and Greed Index (FGI) had bottomed out at 16 out of 100, an Extreme Fear reading only seen during stock market panics:

1 Rally and 3 Months Ago: Extreme Fear

Meanwhile the bastion of basic financial thinking, MarketWatch.com,… Read more

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How to Play (Overdone) Real Estate Worries for 8.1% Dividends

Here at Contrarian Outlook, we love to get questions from readers, and I recently got one from a CEF Insider member about commercial real estate, after Bank of America (BAC) recently said the sector could be the next one to tumble.

Let’s dive into that, because this fear has been driven by the same kind of overwrought media coverage we saw with regional banks (an issue that’s been addressed, by the way, with no depositors or taxpayers losing money).

And that fiasco, you no doubt know, gave us a nice “buy the dip” opportunity on, well, pretty well everything.

The media has set up these commercial real estate worries, too, and that’s highlighting the value of an 8.1%-paying closed-end fund (CEF) holding real estate investment trusts (REITs) we’ll talk about below (not to mention the five REIT CEFs in our CEF Insider portfolio).… Read more

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Play This “Quiet Shift” in Housing for 7% Dividends and Upside

Demand for rental property is literally going through the roof—and we can play the trend for a rock-solid 7% dividend that can be had at a discount!

What’s driving this opportunity? Higher interest rates. As you can see below, the average 30-year mortgage issued today bears an interest rate near 5%, a level we haven’t come close to since the subprime-mortgage crisis.

Mortgage Rates Soar

The trend is so aggressive that it’s getting analysts and journalists into full-blown panic mode, as they begin to report on what I call “seller’s remorse.”

Seeing how rates are soaring and home values are hitting a bump, sellers are already reducing their asking prices and looking to offload property as fast as possible.… Read more

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This 7.4%-Yielding Fund Profits as Rates Rise (and Pays Dividends Monthly)

As difficult as this selloff has been for all of us, it has left some attractive (and discounted) dividends on the board, especially in high-yield closed-end funds (CEFs).

I know it’s tough to buy in a market like this, but the dividends we’re going to talk about today actually benefit from rising inflation, posting higher and higher cash flows as the CPI shoots higher and higher, too.

These are the companies we want to be in now, both to collect their high dividends through today’s tire fire and to profit when the market waters (inevitably) calm and investors finally take notice of these stocks’ sturdy cash flows.… Read more

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Dividend Bargain Hunt: The Huge 12.5% Payout Everyone Has Missed

With the market scraping all-time highs—and dividend yields scraping historic lows—you’re probably thinking there’s nowhere you can find big, safe dividends with at least some price upside right now.

Well, you’re far from alone. The good news is, there’s still one place where the undervalued dividend payers you crave are common.

Today I’m going to show you exactly where to find these buys, in a sector rife with bargain-priced high dividends yielding all the way up to 12.5%. That’s more than 10X what the average S&P 500 stock pays.

Step 1 of Our Dividend Bargain Hunt: Step Back … Way Back

This gives us a nice opportunity to hone our value-seeking skills, too, by doing one of my favorite things—drilling down into the latest earnings numbers, which is something too few investors do.… Read more

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This CEF Soared 51.9% in 2019. Time to Sell?

If you’ve been holding the Cohen & Steers Quality Income Realty Fund (RQI)—a fund I wrote about a lot in 2019—you’ve done very well indeed. RQI has dominated, with its market-price return surging 51.9%, including gains and dividends, since the start of 2019.

So today we’re going to take a closer look at this superstar fund to see what lies ahead, and whether it’s still worthy of your cash, even with its big 2019 gains.

If you’re not familiar with RQI, it owns real estate investment trusts (REITs), such as cell-tower owners Crown Castle International (CCI) and American Tower (AMT), warehouse landlord Prologis (PLD) and data-center REIT Equinix (EQIX).… Read more

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