FSCO (12.8% yield, –11.8% discount) and DLY (9.7% yield, –8.1% discount) stand out as “fallen giants”—offering strong income but trading at steep discounts, reflecting investor caution.
Premium pricing:
PTY (10.7% yield, +11.8% premium) and PDI (14.7% yield, +6.4% premium) show investors are willing to pay above NAV for PIMCO’s reputation and aggressive credit strategies.
Moderate yield, near parity:
FOF (8.1% yield, +1.1% premium) and NZF (7.7% yield, –2.5% discount) hover close to NAV, suggesting balanced sentiment.
Discounted but steady:
BTZ (9.2% yield, –3.6% discount) and EVV (8.7% yield, –3.6% discount) provide solid yields with modest discounts, appealing to value‑oriented investors.
Short duration caution:
SDHY (7.9% yield, –7.1% discount) reflects investor skepticism about short‑duration high‑yield bonds in the current rate environment.
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Premium funds like PTY/PDI are the “heroes on pedestals,” commanding loyalty despite risks.
Discounted funds like FSCO/DLY are “fallen banners,” offering rich income but trading below their worth, embodying resilience under doubt.
Middle‑ground funds (FOF, NZF, BTZ, EVV) are the “steady beams,” neither exalted nor shunned, symbolizing cautious balance.
Here are ten of the highest-yielding closed‑end funds (CEFs) that currently pay monthly dividends in 2025. These stand out for their double‑digit yields and steady income focus.
📊 Top 10 High‑Yield Monthly Dividend CEFs (2025)
Sources:
🔑 Key Takeaways
Yields range from ~8% to 13%, far above typical ETFs or mutual funds.
Monthly payouts make these attractive for retirees or anyone seeking regular cash flow.
Credit‑heavy portfolios (PIMCO, DoubleLine, Nuveen, BlackRock) dominate the list, meaning performance is sensitive to interest rates and credit spreads.
Diversification options exist: FOF spreads risk across many CEFs, while DLY and EVV balance duration and sector exposure.
Risks: High yields often mean leverage, exposure to distressed credit, and potential NAV erosion. Discounts/premiums to NAV can swing sharply.
⚖️ How to Use This List
Think of these funds as income engines rather than growth vehicles. For your metaphorical work on institutional cycles, they embody the “Dividend Hero” archetype: resilient monthly cash flow, but often at the cost of volatility and leverage risk.
This list is AI generated and may be quoting outdated information.
On the bright side of the phone ledger, we have no landline. The cell bill is it. But don’t fall asleep, bank account. All the other cord cutting exacts its pound of flesh!
For example, we “cut the cable cord” years ago. And replaced it with an equally pricey version, albeit a wireless one!
YouTube TV has a base plan of $82.99. However, my monthly tab will be $131.95 plus tax.
How’d I manage a 50%+ premium? By demanding sports in 4K (+$9.99/month). And refusing to live a Sunday in the fall without NFL RedZone and its 6+ hours of live look-ins across football games (+$10.99/month).
Oh, and the WNBA season ticket that I watch with my daughters during the summer.
But the big one, the mortgage payment, dwarfs all. And oh yes, automatically deducted from our account on the first of each month.
“Just” eleven years to go on the mortgage! We shortened to 15-years when we refi’d in 2021. My “basketball dad” car is paid off (2019 Acura MDX) and, while motivated to drive it “into the ground,” the odds are this car won’t be my last.
So the big monthly payment wheel keeps on spinning. I am sure you can relate to a few of these regular drains in your own life.
For which we have a solution: plug these monthly drains with monthly dividends.
But you observe, “Brett! You said only 6% pay monthly. How can I find them?”
Glad you asked! Our Contrarian Income Report has a “virtual monopoly” on the sector. We have 19 monthly payers yielding an average 9.1%. Think about that. A million bucks in the CIR monthly payer lineup generates $7,583.33 per month in passive income.
Plus, the original million invested in these “elite 19” stays intact. Or better yet, grinds higher! Since inception 10 years ago, our entire CIR portfolio has generated 9.6% in annual returns. And that’s mostly paid in cash dividends, with the majority dishing monthly.
Our CIR monthly dividend GOAT (greatest of all time) is DoubleLine Income Solutions Fund (DSL). In April 2016, we added DSL to the CIR portfolio at a price of $16.99 per share.
Since then we have collected 115 monthly dividends that have totaled $15.71. That’s 92% of our initial buy price in payouts. It’s almost house money now!
Imagine investing in a simple fund that trades just like any blue-chip stock—and earning your entire investment back within 10 years via monthly dividends. With the regular payout stream still rolling strong!
And DSL is not a mere annuity. It’s way better. DSL is a bond fund run by the “bond god” himself Jeffrey Gundlach. The modern-day deity of fixed-income investing scours the globe to collect deals that power DSL’s monthly 11-cent divvie.
11 Cents on the Month, Every Month
DSL yields 11.8% today. Investors with $100,000 invested in DSL shares enjoy $11,800 per year in passive dividend income. That’s $983.33 in monthly deposits and—oh!—that’s right: it’s autopay, but to you!
Enough to pay Verizon, YouTube TV and internet while heating the house—with extra cash left over for a nice dinner!
And a $50,000 stake in DSL delivers $491.66 in monthly payouts. That’s still meaningful income to cover those every-30-day expenses.
Now, I wouldn’t pile everything into DSL today, when savvy investors can spread risk among 18 more solid monthly payers that deliver a green cash river too. This is diversification without di-worseification (thank you, Peter Lynch!). We want to retire on dividends, and the best way is to bulletproof our payout streams across asset classes, sectors and national borders.
And that’s our elite 19!
We are not hanging on the Federal Reserve’s next word. Nor are we glued to policymaker decisions. We are insulated from this noise by assembling an elite 9.1% paying portfolio of monthly dividend payers.
If this monthly dividend discussion sparked an “ah ha!” moment for you, well, welcome! Wall Street has been feeding you the equivalent of “junk food” financial advice your entire life.
The 4% withdrawal rule? C’mon man.
None of the vanilla maxims generate passive income. Annually, monthly or quarterly!
It’s time to clean up the financial diet. Trim down the “buy and hope” desperation and beef up the dividends.
Mastercard (MA) is a near-perfect dividend stock. Its payout is always climbing, having nearly doubled over the last five years. (MA shareholders, you can thank every business that accepts Mastercard for your “pennies on every dollar” rake.)
Tap, tap, tap. Remember cash? Me neither. Another 2020 casualty, with Mastercard making a few dimes or dollars on every plastic transaction.
The cashless trend has been in motion for years. But international growth prospects remain huge. Just a few years ago, 80%+ of transactions in Spain, Italy and even tech-savvy Japan were in cash.
We expect more dividend hikes as more cash turns to plastic. Or skips plastic entirely and goes straight to e-transfers. Mastercard and close cousin Visa (V) nab a nice piece of that action, too.
The only chink in MA’s armor? Everyone knows it is a dynamic dividend stock. So it only yields 0.5%. Investors keep bidding it higher, knowing that the next dividend raise is just around the corner.
So, the compounding of those hikes makes MA a great stock for our kids and grandkids. You and I, however, don’t have the time to wait for 0.5% to grow. And $2,500 on a $500K investment simply won’t get it done.
Let’s instead consider top-notch closed-end fund (CEF) Gabelli Dividend & Income Trust (GDV), managed by legendary value investor Mario Gabelli.
Mastercard is one of Gabelli’s largest holdings. But we income investors would prefer GDV because it boasts a healthy dividend right around 6.4%, paid monthly, nearly 13 times what Mastercard pays (and this is low in CEF-land; other funds, like the next one we’ll talk about, pay nearly double that).
And as I write this, thanks to the conservative folks who buy CEFs, we have a rare opportunity to buy Mario’s portfolio for just 89 cents on the dollar.
Yup, GDV trades at an 11% discount to its net asset value, or NAV. It’s a way to boost MA’s payout and snag a discount, too.
Where does this discount come from?
CEFs are like their mutual fund cousins, with one exception: they have fixed pools of shares, so they can (and do) trade higher and lower than their NAVs, or “fair” values (the value of their holdings minus any debt).
As contrarians, we can step in when they are temporarily out of favor, like after a pullback, when liquidity is low, and buy them at generous discounts.
GDV holds more blue-chip dividend payers alongside MA, such as American Express (AXP), Microsoft (MSFT) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM). And with GDV, we have an opportunity to purchase them at an 11% discount.
