How to Pick Winning CEFs (for 387% Returns, 7%+ Dividends)

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How to Pick Winning CEFs (for 387% Returns, 7%+ Dividends)

Once folks get a taste of closed-end funds (CEFs), they typically rave about one thing: the dividends! Yields of 7% and up are common with CEFs, and they often come your way monthly.

We also love the fact that even though CEFs are a small corner of the market (with only about 500 or so out there), we can build a diversified portfolio with them: there are CEFs that hold US and international stocks, bonds, real estate—even private equity. You name it.

This broad range gets us around a problem most income-seekers face: being forced to stake significant sums in one, or a handful of, stocks just to get big payouts.… Read more

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How This Weird “Dividend Magnet” Drove 252% Gains (and Crushed ETFs)

If I can give you just one piece of advice to start 2023, it’s this: do not trust your dividend income to ETFs!

It’s one of the biggest mistakes I see people make—especially with the market’s gains this year. These first-level players (wrongly!) think that in a rising market, they can buy pretty well anything and be A-OK.

Not so.

In fact, a rising market when you’re most likely to buy low-quality investments, puts your portfolio in danger in the next downturn. Just ask anyone who bought crypto or profitless tech in 2021!

And dividend ETFs are at the very top of our list of assets to avoid, not only now but always.… Read more

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Market Wrap with Moe, 2 Favorite Dividend Stocks Right Now

I recently joined Market Wrap to chat with Moe Ansari about the market. With most money managers, Joe Sixpack and CNBC now universally bearish, he was keen to hear an original take!

The time to dump stocks, I told Moe, was early in the year. Or late ’21. Before the mainstream media even whispered the words bear market. Now that just about everything is 20% down, we have professional stock cheerleaders like The Wall Street Journal lamenting that buying the dip isn’t working.

A contrarian sign that this dip should be bought? Perhaps…

Moe and I yapped about the Federal Reserve (of course), the doom and gloom mainstream crowd, and my two favorite dividend stocks to buy right now.… Read more

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Sell These 3 “Dinosaur Dividends” Before Their Next Cut

With the market melting down, dividend stocks have built-in cushions. Unlike profitless tech shares, which rarely pay, our dividend payers’ yields go up when prices go down.

The result? Stronger price action for our favorite yield plays, thanks to attention from NASDAQ refugees.

But we need to be extra vigilant about dividend cuts. They, after all, provide a sickening “double whammy.” We lose our cash flow and some capital as the shares get repriced lower post-cut. And the drop can be even worse in panicked markets like today’s.

AT&T Investors Suffer Over and Over—From 1 Dividend Cut

AT&T (T) is a prime example.… Read more

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How to Pick Winning CEFs (for 555% Returns, 7%+ Dividends)

Once folks get a taste of closed-end funds (CEFs), they typically rave about one thing: the dividends! Yields of 7% and up are common with CEFs, and they often come your way monthly.

We also love the fact that even though CEFs are a small corner of the market (with only about 500 or so out there), we can build a diversified portfolio with them: there are CEFs that hold US and international stocks, bonds, real estate—even private equity. You name it.

This broad range gets us around a problem most income-seekers face: being forced to stake significant sums in one, or a handful of, stocks just to get big payouts.… Read more

Read More

You Can Have 10.2% Dividends, 250% Gains in 1 Buy (Here’s the Ticker)

I hate to see everyday folks grinding it out with “has-been” dividend payers like AT&T (T) when there are dozens of safe 7%+ yielders out there, many with incredible performance histories, too. 

Trouble is, most people don’t know where to look. But I’ll take you on a personal tour of this overlooked corner of the market (and reveal the ticker of one of the best of these investments, which is throwing off a 10.2% yield as I write this) today.

First, back to Ma Bell: sure, she yields a high 8.4%, but the stock is one of the biggest yield traps on the market!… Read more

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447% Returns, 5.2% Dividends (Just by Avoiding This 1 Simple Mistake)

Once folks get a taste of closed-end funds (CEFs), they typically rave about one thing: the dividends! Yields of 7% and up are common with CEFs, and they often come your way monthly.

We also love the fact that even though CEFs are a small corner of the market (with only about 500 or so out there), we can build a diversified portfolio with them: there are CEFs that hold US and international stocks, bonds, real estate—even private equity. You name it.

This broad range gets us around a problem most income-seekers face: being forced to stake significant sums in single stocks just to get big payouts.… Read more

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What the AT&T Dividend Cut Really Means (and 3 Huge Dividends to Buy Instead)

The once unthinkable has happened: AT&T (T), a Dividend Aristocrat that increased payouts for 30 years, said it will cut its payout nearly in half.

The move is especially infuriating because, as recently as April, we were hearing a lot about why the company would likely hike its payout in 2021, and management had stood by the dividend.

That’s now out the window—and the market’s not happy.

Dividend Cut Sends AT&T on a Wild Ride

It just goes to show you that even companies among the vaunted Dividend Aristocrats fall from grace from time to time. We all remember back in 2017, when another sacred cow, General Electric (GE), slashed its payout in half, as well.… Read more

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It’s Never Been Easier to Retire on Dividends (Can Be Done on $600K)

Let me start with a special shout out to our dedicated readers at Barron’s. Here at Contrarian Outlook, we’ve been drawing up the playbook to retire on dividends for years (Two years ago, we literally wrote the book on the retirement strategy.)

So it was a hoot to see Barron’s run a cover story about retiring on dividends. But I have a bit of constructive criticism about the piece: the dividend stocks highlighted in the feature article had yields too low to actually retire on.

The magazine’s 10 buys included Coca-Cola (KO), International Business Machines (IBM) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and had an average current yield of 4.1% between them (as of the time the piece was written).… Read more

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It’s Never Been Easier to Retire on Dividends (Can Be Done on $600K)

Let me start with a special shout out to our dedicated readers at Barron’s. Here at Contrarian Outlook, we’ve been drawing up the playbook to retire on dividends for years (Two years ago, we literally wrote the book on the retirement strategy.)

So it was a hoot to see Barron’s run a cover story about retiring on dividends. But I have a bit of constructive criticism about the piece: the dividend stocks highlighted in the feature article had yields too low to actually retire on.

The magazine’s 10 buys included Coca-Cola (KO), International Business Machines (IBM) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and had an average current yield of 4.1% between them (as of the time the piece was written).… Read more

Read More

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