Our Contrarian Income Strategy for 40% Yearly Returns

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Our Contrarian Income Strategy for 40% Yearly Returns

As the stock market returns to Planet Earth, we contrarians will have an opportunity to cherry pick some bargains. This is a good thing for us income seekers. We’ve been thin on dividend deals since the Federal Reserve cranked the printing presses in the spring of 2020.

Last year was slim pickings for income plays. When the Fed’s easy money drives prices of everything higher and higher, our dividend yields go down.

This makes it challenging for us to identify meaningful yields with a bit of upside. After all, we’re in the business of buying low and selling high (not buying high and hoping to ride a price even higher).… Read more

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This Dow 30 Fund Yields 6.4%, Trades for 95 Cents on the Dollar

As dividend yields and interest rates dropped in recent decades, income investors looked for ways to generate cash flow from stocks. Selling (“writing”) covered calls is one strategy that has gained attention.

It is certainly a conservative options strategy that most income investors think they should do. The math is compelling.

Here’s how it works. We would buy a dividend stock like Exxon Mobil (XOM) for its $0.87 per share quarterly payout (a 6% yield). Then we would write a covered call with a “strike” price just above the stock’s current level.

For example, XOM trades below $60 as I write.… Read more

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These Inflation Dividend Stocks Could Rally Another 100%

Oil stocks—and their fat dividends—are breaking out to new highs.

Question for you. If Fed Chair Jay Powell hadn’t printed a bunch of money over the past 14 months, would energy stocks still be this electric?

Chairman JP Prints Lots of Money

My take? No way. Their recovery would be (much) more muted.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA)—the best and most unbiased source of industry information I know—world oil demand is projected to hit 96.7 million barrels per day this year.

Meanwhile, global supply is just 93.6 million barrels per day. Production was halted when the world shut down a spring ago.… Read more

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This 6.1% Inflation-Protected Dividend Has 61% Upside

Like many wise money quotes, nobody is quite sure who originally said:

     “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

It’s frequently credited to economist John Maynard Keynes. A popular story goes that Keynes changed his mind on a financial issue, was criticized for his “flip flop”—and then delivered the zinger.

QuoteInvestigator.com researched the quip and concluded that Keynes never actually said it. (Keep that bit of market trivia in your back pocket.)

Regardless, the facts have changed on big oil dividends. On September 9, 2015, I warned readers that Big Oil was a “Big Dividend Trap.”… Read more

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1 Dumb Dividend Capture Strategy, 2 Better Income Ideas

Our beat here at Contrarian Outlook is dividends. We seek to collect them using proven income strategies.

Dividend stock investing isn’t easy, even though it looks so on the surface. (Find a high yield, and buy it!) We’ve all had our heart broken by one or more “disappearing” dividend payers in the past. These delinquents are the reason we place such a premium on dividend security.

One secure-looking strategy is (unfortunately) known as dividend capture. I don’t like the name because it sounds like something we should be interested in. I don’t like the approach itself because it doesn’t really work.… Read more

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A “2020-Proof” Way to Get 11% Dividends and a Lifetime of Wealth

It’s the most common rule in investing: if you want to cut your risk (and protect your dividends!), you need to diversify.

Yes, we’ve all heard it before, but what most people don’t get is just how much you can damage your finances by not sticking with it—or, conversely, how much you can reap in gains (and safe dividends) by following a smart diversification strategy.

From $0 to $1 Million in Assets … and Back to $0

I’ve seen this play out firsthand; a friend was an early employee at a social media startup that got a big investment from a tech billionaire.… Read more

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These 11% Dividends Have Crashed 43% (They’re Just Getting Started)

You may not know it, but big pension funds are pulling billions of dollars out of one sector, leaving behind a group of stocks these big players will never buy again.

That’s a clear signal that we need to avoid these stocks, too.

I’m talking about oil companies. In New Jersey, for example, legislators are trying to ban the state pension fund from fossil fuels. The state’s Fossil Fuel Divestment Bill has bipartisan support, mainly because oil has been a clear loser for investors. We can clearly see this when we look at the chart of the biggest oil major of them all:

Exxon’s Long Decline

Exxon-Mobil (XOM) peaked at a $500-billion market cap in 2007 and has been in a downward spiral since, pushed lower by the 2014 and 2020 drops in oil prices.… Read more

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5 Gaudy, Garish Dividends You Can’t Help But Gawk At

What if I told you that, even in this expensive stock market, that we can still find yields of 9%, 10%… heck, even 20%?

Volatility is back, and with it, some discounted stocks with generous yields that we can snag. We’ll talk big dividends up to 20% today.

An S&P 500 index fund, as usual, won’t pay you enough income to retire. You have to buy the pricey basket and hope it’ll keep levitating higher. A purchase of the popular index today and you’ll barely squeeze out $18,000 in dividends by this time next year. That’s not much but it’s downright lavish compared with the $6,700 you’d eke out of a 10-year T-note.… Read more

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These Dividends Grow 111%+ (They’re Perfect for 2021)

Let’s not assume our retirement savings will benefit from the Federal Reserve’s bout of 2020 money printing. Inflation could be a real problem, as soon as 2021. So let’s talk about stocks that are not only protected but likely to benefit from Jay Powell’s prolific “efforts.”

(In other words, dividend stocks that’ll double while investors are fixated on deflation.)

When it comes to inflation, many folks have a dangerous blind spot. They recall 2008, and the Fed’s then-extraordinary actions late that year, which gave us a narrow escape from deflation, and no inflation to speak of.

Just think back to that time.… Read more

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5 Stocks Set to Roar Into 2021 (and 8 Laggards About to Crash)

Sometimes, picking the best contrarian stocks can be fairly straightforward.

For instance, back in early spring, it seemed obvious to anyone who went a bit deeper than the daily headlines to see that the market wasn’t giving tech stocks their due, given its importance during the lockdown and its potential for big post–COVID-19 growth.

So in April I wrote an article that highlighted the Columbia Seligman Premium Tech Fund (STK), a closed-end fund (CEF) primed to benefit from surging online shopping, rising mobile data use and the fast shift toward working from home. Plus, STK yielded an outsized 9.4%, so you were getting a large part of your profits in dividend cash.… Read more

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