The 60/40 Portfolio Can’t Hold a Candle to This 10.4% Dividend Strategy

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I hate to hear about investors using “rules” like the 60/40 portfolio (where you devote 60% of your holdings to stocks and the rest to bonds) to invest their hard-earned cash.

The problem with “rules” like this one is that they lack the ability to adjust to changing markets, like the mess we’ve been living through this year, which has walloped stocks and bonds in equal measure.

Advisors See the Light on Oversimplified “Rules” Like the 60/40 Portfolio

It seems like advisors and the business media are finally accepting this hard truth. Recently, banks like Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan Chase & Co.Read more

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Whether you own a Treasury or the typical dividend stock these days, you’re still losing money after inflation.

I know what you’re thinking: tell me something I don’t know!

But there’s a solution hiding in plain sight: closed-end funds (CEFs), a widely overlooked (and publicly traded) asset class that often throws off rich payouts of 8% or more. We’ll do a deep dive into these scandalously overlooked income plays, and how they pay those big (and often monthly) dividends in a moment.

Here’s the top-line takeaway, though: by going with a CEF, you won’t have to sell the blue chips you own now.… Read more

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This market crash has served up some terrific opportunities in closed-end funds (CEFs), many of which are throwing off safe 7%+ dividends today.

Dividends of that size, of course, are critical today, as we look to offset rising inflation. And I think we can all agree that a CD or Treasury will never match a payout like that.

But of course, not all CEFs are set to rise equally as the stock market continues to regain its footing (which I expect it to as we move through the back half of 2022), so we need to be careful about exactly which sectors—and funds—we target.… Read more

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If you’re like me, you’re getting sick of this tug-of-war between inflation and recession worries. One steals our purchasing power, while the other knocks down our portfolio values!

But I’ve got good news for you—two pieces of good news, actually.

  1. Our closed-end funds (CEFs) continue to deliver high, and reliable, income. The portfolio of my CEF Insider service boasts many funds yielding north of 8%, and the vast majority pay dividends monthly. Those high yields help us hedge against inflation, and the extra dividend cash (should we let it build up in our portfolios) naturally reduces our volatility.
  2. Recession fears are overblown, according to the latest data (which we’ll get to in a bit).

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I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s been a flurry of doom-and-gloom articles making the rounds that all preach the same thing: anyone looking to retire now faces a bleak time of it indeed.

To that I say: nonsense! Below I’ll show you three closed-end funds (CEFs) whose yields are so high right now (up to 11.2%) that buying them and living off their rich payouts has rarely been this attractive.

We’ll talk more about these three funds, and the many benefits CEFs offer retirees, shortly. First, let’s talk about the “retirement alarmism” we’re seeing in the media today. Because these articles (all driven by the fact that fearsome headlines get clicks) suggest that a mix of high inflation and still-high stock valuations will result in retirees facing much lower “safe withdrawal rates,” or SWRs.… Read more

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Look, I know this inflation-panicked market is frustrating. But despite the endless doomsaying from the pundits, there is good news: if you’re investing for income and have a long time horizon, there are some big dividends (I’m talking 10%+ yields) waiting for us in closed-end funds (CEFs).

In a second, we’re going to dive into three such funds I’ve assembled into a low-drama “mini-portfolio” yielding north of 10%.

We can thank the selloff for this opportunity: when stock (and CEF) prices go down, yields go up. And our CEFs discounts to net asset value (NAV, or the per-share value of a CEF’s portfolio) fall to bargain levels.… Read more

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Here at Contrarian Outlook, we’ve been talking a lot about crypto lately—but not in the way you might think.

We’re not buyers—far from it! Instead, we’re using a savvy, dividend-focused strategy to set ourselves up for some nice gains (and dividend payouts!) as gamblers flee crypto and speculative tech stocks. (I’ll spotlight two closed-end funds that are aligned to scoop up our “crypto refugees” while handing us dividends yielding up to 11% in just a moment.)

I’m reminded of crypto right now because many of these “coins” have fallen hard recently—and last week, we got word of one that went essentially to zero!… Read more

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Most investors I speak to have no idea how much they’ll need to retire (and with the uncertainty we’re facing today, that’s totally understandable!).

So let’s talk about that—and focus on closed-end funds (CEF), totally overlooked investments that could let you retire on dividends alone, possibly on as little as $325K. That’s the ultimate way to get peace of mind these days, because you don’t have to worry about selling into a pullback to keep your income stream intact.

The Income Side

When calculating how much you’ll need to clock out of the workforce, you really only need to know three things:

  1. How much you’ll spend in your first year of retirement.

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A contrarian indicator just flashed, and it’s telling us that now is the time to buy one of my favorite high-yield investments: closed-end funds (CEFs). Today we’re going to look at three yielding an outsized 11.6%.

Yield hunters that we are, we know the power of such a payout: with a $520,000 investment, we can kickstart a $60,000-a-year income stream. That’s a cool $5,000 averaged out on a monthly basis. And the three funds we’re going to cover in a moment give us the safety of diversification, going well beyond stocks to give us access to bonds, gold (a decent inflation hedge on its own) and real estate (ditto!).… Read more

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Ignore the overtorqued headlines about inflation: even though prices are rising, they won’t take out the economy.

In fact, rising inflation is setting us up with a contrarian opportunity to grab double-digit dividends in a corner of the market everyone’s written off. That would be consumer-discretionary stocks, which you’d think would be the main victims of inflation, but that’s far from the case, for reasons we’ll get into shortly.

We’ll also delve into one smartly run consumer-focused closed-end fund (CEF) yielding an outsized 11% below. But first we have to talk strategy, because while there are opportunities for us, this twitchy market also includes some traps we need to watch for.… Read more

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