“Two Pacificos, please?” I asked the bartender.

(When in doubt, hit the lager button. The other option was Lagunitas IPA, a 6%+ refreshment. A bit heavy for our school fundraiser.)

I handed the second Pacifico to my buddy—responsible dad rule two, keep school event double fisting to a minimum—who kindly came to support the cause. I asked my friend how his Saturday was. Interior design work, he explained.

“Tell me more,” I fished…knowing that he was most definitely not an interior designer.

He’d taken a picture of his new house, uploaded it to AI, and asked for a new layout.… Read more

Even Jay Powell seemed lost.

“The thing I want to emphasize is that nobody knows,” the beleaguered Fed chair sighed at last week’s presser, when asked about the effects of the latest flare-up in the Middle East.

It’s easy to see why. The poor man is in a jam not of his making. Futures markets see fewer and fewer rate cuts on the horizon. And more forecasts see a bounce in inflation—maybe even stagflation.

To be sure, no one at the Fed (or anywhere else) had $100 oil on their bingo card in January!

The mainstream crowd, of course, is just as shocked as the experts at that development.… Read more

This private-credit mess we’ve been talking about lately has raised a question no one wants to ask: Is 2026 shaping up to be another 2008?

It’s easy to see why some investors may be thinking along those lines. And it’s something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to lately. But here’s the twist: There’s another year I think 2026 resembles a lot more than 2008.

That would be 2023.

If you remember, that year was a buying opportunity in stocks—and to pick up the closed-end fund (CEF) we’re going to discuss today. In fact, both 2008 and 2023 ultimately turned into strong setups for this 7.7%-paying fund.… Read more

Healthcare stocks are selling off with the turbulence in the Middle East.

But, why? The best plays here are geopolitical-proof. They print money regardless of what’s going on in the world.

So this is a good time to check in on healthcare. In a moment we’ll review five dividends between 6.0% and, get this, 14.1%!

First, though, let’s unpack the reasons for the recent pullback. Back in August, I flagged how Medicaid cuts, health research funding, pharmaceutical tariffs and a cocktail of other headwinds had kept the sector pinned down for months. However these resilient companies have a habit of getting back up—and sure enough, healthcare went on a new tear, returning about 25% through late February.… Read more

Boaz Weinstein is a name many CEF investors know. He’s an activist investor who’s targeted CEFs in the past, particularly those he sees as underperforming.

Now, another closed-end fund (CEF) investor is adopting Weinstein’s tactics—and turning them on two of the activist’s own funds. This investor’s goal? Wipe out the discounts to net asset value (NAV, or the value of their underlying portfolios) on these two funds, and in doing so drive their prices higher.

It’s a fascinating story, and one that shows how, in the small world of CEFs, skilled activists sometimes turn their attention to each other.

Let’s back up for a moment.… Read more

Be careful how you buy your bonds. The most popular tickers have four “fatal flaws” that’ll doom you to underperformance at best, or at worst leave you hanging in the event of a market meltdown!

Let’s pick on the widely followed and owned iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) as an example. It has attracted over $15 billion in assets because:

1. It’s convenient and as easy to buy as a stock.
2. It’s diversified (for better or worse, as we’ll see shortly) with 1,327 individual holdings.
3. It pays well, at nearly 6% today.

The accessibility of funds like HYG appears cute and comfortable enough.… Read more

The bombs continue to fall in the Middle East. But we contrarians know something the crowd always forgets at times like this:

The world is always burning somewhere.

At times like these, our Contrarian Income Report dividend strategy shines. Our portfolio yields 8.2% on average, and those dividends roll in no matter what the world throws at us.

The result? No need to sell into a downturn to get the cash we need. And we get the chance to go on offense, too, snagging dividends on the dips and boosting our income stream (and upside potential) as we do.

Rinse and repeat.… Read more

The Iran conflict has, of course, sent oil prices spiking. And the tensions in the region are unlikely to end soon.

Wherever you stand on the conflict, let’s set that aside for a moment and look at the situation through an investment lens—specifically what it means for those invested in oil, either directly or through shares of producers.

It’s clear that anyone holding oil and oil-related stocks saw a bump in their share prices after hostilities broke out, and prices have bounced higher and lower since.

Let’s look at exactly what’s played out so far this year (as of this writing) from the oil-price side—through the crude-tracking United States Oil Fund (USO)—and the producer side, through the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE).… Read more

This high-yield sector is being taken to the woodshed by the Wall Street spreadsheet jockeys this year.

The contrarian opportunity? Big yields up to 15.6% in BDC Land. Some of these deals are trading for as little as 72 cents on the dollar.

Which means opportunists like us have been handed something rare: wild yields of 11% to 15.6% for as little as 72 cents on the dollar.

Business development companies (BDCs) are “Main Street bankers” because they do what Wall Street won’t: provide capital to small and midsized businesses that the big banks either ignore entirely, or won’t touch without demanding a firstborn as collateral.… Read more

These worries around private credit are giving us CEF investors a nice “bonus”: They’re throwing a very positive light on our favorite 8%+ income plays.

After all, the CEFs we hold in the portfolio of our CEF Insider service offer transparency, high (and often monthly paid) dividends and attractive discounts, too, in part due to geopolitical worries.

We’ll get to a specific bond fund that’s giving us a generous discount and an 11.6% dividend in a moment. First, let’s take a closer look at what’s really happening with private credit, and the opportunity that concerns around it are setting up for us now.… Read more