The holy grail of investing is where you buy a share that pays a dividend and when the share price doubles or the TR doubles you withdraw your capital and re-invest in another share that pays a dividend.
You then have a share in your snowball that pays income at a cost of zero, zilch, nothing and a new position that also pays income, where you hope to do the same again.
I’ve used the Dividend Hero portfolio as it can’t be said that the information is cherry picking. Of course you could have been unlucky and bought the wrong shares but there are some familiar names in the top ten holdings.
I’ve picked a random date for all the shares so you could have possibly traded some of them with a better entry price.
From the current list MUT might be of interest with the new management team who have a solid history of income investing. DYOR.
For most of the others it might be worth waiting for a black swan event, remembering that news driven retraces often don’t last long, whereas a recession driven reversal lasts on average around ten months.
One reason to invest, bull markets last longer than bear markets.
Plenty of research if you type LWDB in the search box.
You could have locked in a yield of 7% if you were lucky, most probably you would have settled for 6%. Mr. Market is always right but sometimes not that bright.
Current buying price yield around 8%.
Current yield 2.8%
A big mistake from my own SNOWABALL
An opening position, where I intended to build a stake to around 10k.
The mistake was not taking the one days profit, I would do the same again but not returning to the share.
One of my heroes is Warren Buffett, often considered the world’s greatest investor. His wisdom has guided me for decades, but had I listened earlier, I’d be worth millions more. The Oracle of Omaha warns about passive income: “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”
Unearned income
Passive income is earnings from outside of paid work. Alas, there’s no such thing as a free lunch and everything worthwhile takes effort. I’ve built passive income over decades, but what are the snags? Here’s ChatGPT’s reply:
The main problems with passive income are that it often requires significant upfront effort or capital, comes with inherent risks and no guarantees, and still demands some level of ongoing maintenance to be successful. The idea of truly effortless passive income is largely a myth.
I agree with this chatbot’s summary. Today, my family’s passive income can exceed £10,000 a month from various sources, including these four income streams:
* Savings interest (from cash deposits)
* Interest from government and corporate bonds (mostly safe, but not 100% guaranteed)
* Occupational pensions (from companies my wife and I previously worked for)
* Dividends from company shares (a risky, but mainstream, investment).
I’ve listed our four income streams from smallest to largest. Largest is our dividends from owning stakes in American, British, and global businesses. While we sleep, hundreds of millions of workers work for us — exactly as Buffett suggests.
Today, our passive income is a river, but it began as a trickle. Indeed, I started investing in the 1980s with only a few pounds. Back then, £20 a week was too much for me, but it’s what some investors might start out with today.
Here’s the maths: £20 a week is roughly £1,000 a year, so let’s say someone invests £1k each year into shares. Growing at, say, 8% a year, this produces a pot worth £125,020 after 30 years. That’s the initial £25k and £100,020 of gains, showing the power of compound interest.
But here’s the trick: as our incomes and capital increased, my wife and I kept ratcheting up our investment levels. Today, we invest thousands of pounds a week into owning more shares. For us, this has been one path to lasting wealth.
I am really loving the theme/design of your weblog. Do you ever run into any browser compatibility issues? A couple of my blog visitors have complained about my website not operating correctly in Explorer but looks great in Safari. Do you have any advice to help fix this problem?
The design is my own, it just sort of evolved. Ditto Explorer/Safari, no advice on how to resolve the problem.
The Perfect Defense? 5 Stable Dividend Stocks Paying Up to 11.5%
Brett Owens, Chief Investment Strategist Updated: July 31, 2026
Hey, remember tariffs? Well, they’re baaaaaaaack!
As of last week, new import taxes of 10% to 12.5% were slapped on 60 trading partners. This covers a cool 99.4% of everything that America buys abroad. Let’s pile the tariff return on top of the recent Fed news and tensions that keep rolling in the Middle East. There’s obviously plenty of bricks in the current Wall Street wall of worry for this stock market to climb.
This climb, however, is no problem for “low drama” dividends like these. I’m talking about five companies yielding between 4.9% and, get this, 11.5%! No matter the headlines these payouts keep flowing.
Plus, these stocks hold up better than the broader market during pullbacks.
The technical term for low drama on Wall Street is “low beta.”A beta below 1 signals that a stock is calmer than the market. That’s what we want.
These five companies offer up low beta and high yields, an excellent combination.
The financial sector has generally been a smoother ride than the broader market in 2026, but First Interstate BancSystem (FIBK, 4.9% yield) stands out not just for its low volatility, but its relatively high yield of nearly 5%.
FIBK is the company behind First Interstate Bank, a Montana-based regional operator with 271 banking offices in 10 states across the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. Its offerings are what we’d expect: consumer products (checking and savings accounts, credit cards and mortgages), business products (commercial and SBA loans), wealth management and treasury solutions.
It’s a boring, under-the-radar company whose shorter-term struggles (such as loan declines and elevated payoff activity) are masking encouraging longer-term trends, including its expanding net interest margin. Its shareholder reward story is similarly mixed.
First Interstate Slammed the Brakes on Dividend Growth a Few Years Ago
However, FIBK has been aggressively repurchasing stock since it announced a buyback program during the second half of 2025. It has so far clawed back roughly 8% of its outstanding shares, and the company just green-lit another $150 million, putting the total program authorization at $450 million. The open question: Will its improving bottom line eventually flow back into the dividend?
As for volatility: FIBK’s one- and five-year betas are 0.6 and 0.8, respectively, both of which signal that the company is less shaky than not just the S&P 500, but the financial sector, too.
Real estate as a whole has had every bit as much volatility as the broader market over the past few years—without the gains to show for it. But Sabra Health Care REIT (SBRA, 5.4% yield) has been less choppy on average while still delivering much better returns.
Sabra is a senior-focused healthcare real estate investment trust (REIT) with about 360 property investments across the U.S. and Canada. The biggest chunk of its business is skilled nursing and transitional care real estate, at a little less than half the portfolio’s annualized cash net operating income (NOI). The rest comes from managed senior housing, leased senior housing, behavioral health properties, specialty hospitals, and more.
The relative stock stability is great—the company boasts a five-year beta of 0.6 and a downright gentle one-year beta of 0.2.
But the Dividend Is Too Sleepy … For Now
There’s reason to believe that could change. SBRA’s current 30-cent quarterly dividend comes out to $1.20 per year, which is 77% of estimates for this year’s funds from operations (FFO, a profitability metric for REITs). That’s a healthy coverage ratio for a REIT—one that leaves room for growth, in fact.
And Sabra just raised its full-year FFO and adjusted FFO (AFFO) guidance following a coup of a tenant transition. The company announced that all 26 properties currently leased to Avamere will be moved to a new tenant—Cascadia, a high-quality operator—under a deal that includes a nearly 30% increase in rent.
But Wall Street isn’t sleeping on Sabra. Shares now trade at roughly 14 times FFO estimates, which is on the steep side.
Getty Realty (GTY, 5.5% yield) is another well-grounded REIT. It owns more than 1,160 freestanding (aka single-tenant) retail properties across 44 states and D.C.
Retail generally isn’t synonymous with reliable, but Getty is built different. That’s because its tenant base includes convenience stores, express tunnel car washes, auto service centers, drive-through quick-service restaurants, gas stations, repair shops and more. It’s not flashy, but Getty prints cash as a result.
And the More It Prints, The More We Get
Getty’s 5%-plus dividend accounts for less than 80% of FFO estimates, and it’s backed by sturdy tenants with good credit. It’s no surprise that GTY shares are historically cool cucumbers—their five-year beta is under 0.8, and their 1-year beta is close to zero.
The flip side? Getty grows like a defensive stock, too. It’s also coming up against some near-term headwinds, including weakness in lower-end consumers that’s weighing on its convenience store and gas station tenants.
Kinetik Holdings (KNTK, 6.6% yield) is a midstream energy company that operates in Texas’ Delaware Basin, which is part of the larger Permian Basin. Its assets include 200 miles of crude oil pipeline, 90,000 barrels of crude oil storage, 3,500 miles of steel natural gas gathering lines, 2.2 billion cubic feet of nat-gas processing capacity, 360 miles of water pipelines and more.
KNTK, and the energy sector as a whole, also help illustrate how a low beta doesn’t always tell the whole story.
Kinetik Is a Stock in (a Lot of) Motion
While beta is used as a gauge of volatility, what it really does is measure how an investment moves relative to a comparable index. So while a low beta can mean a stock isn’t volatile, it can also mean something else—like in this case, KNTK’s almost nonexistent one-year beta is really saying that the stock hasn’t been at all correlated with the market.
Kinetik is more sensitive to commodity prices than many midstream peers, so it has been prone to larger swings—and yet its performance is merely par for the industry. So we can’t rely on KNTK for defense. Upside is a question mark, too. It operates in one of the fastest-growing formations in the country, but it has at times been dogged by weak Waha Hub natural gas prices and price-related volume curtailments from its customers.
The dividend is a bright spot, albeit not blinding. Kinetik was formed in 2022 from the merger of Altus Midstream and BCP Raptor Holdco LP. It quickly started paying 75 cents per share. After a couple years of holding flat, it raised by 4% in 2024, then by another 4% or so in 2025.
Ellington Financial (EFC, 11.5% yield) is a mortgage REIT (mREIT) that deals not in physical properties, but instead “paper” holdings such as residential transition loans, residential and commercial mortgage loans, commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBSs) and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). It also deals a bit in agency MBSs, though it’s reducing that business.
The game is pretty simple here: mREITs borrow money at short-term rates to buy mortgages and other paper tied to long-term rates. They pocket the difference. So they need short-term rates to be lower than long-term rates (which they usually are), and they thrive when the spread between the two is wide.
Ellington’s five-year beta is around 0.9, so it has been only a little less volatile than the market over that time. The one-year beta of 0.5 implies it has been much calmer of late—not an advantage given that EFC’s stock has been flat while the S&P 500 has climbed. But check this out:
EFC’s Total Returns Are More Tightly Tied to the Market
Like with many mREITs, the lion’s share of EFC’s returns come from its super-sized monthly dividend, not stock movement—but financial-data sites usually calculate beta from pure price performance. The good news? Ellington might be more volatile than the numbers suggest, but it has still been relatively less wiggly.
Whether we’d want to hunker down in Ellington is another matter.
The yield, while sky-high, looks safe for now. The company’s adjusted distributable earnings guidance of 45 cents per share comfortably covers the 39 cents it pays out every three months. However, the fate of EFC’s stock is largely tied to interest rates—shares likely would react well to signs of a cut, but if the market thinks hikes are inbound, this mREIT could be in for a bumpy ride.
This 11%+ Dividend Is My Favorite Way to Fight Off Market Chaos
The news cycle is back into overdrive, which means the market is a minefield of headline risk right now. That’s why I’m always on the lookout for double-digit yields like what EFC offers right now. That massive income can go a long way toward stabilizing our portfolios while helping us come out ahead.
Net dividend cover restored to 1.1x for H1 2026, in line with TRIG’s long-term target and up from 1.0x for 2025. Net dividend cover is stated after the scheduled repayment of £111m of project-level debt for the half year and is supported by £209m of operational cash generation. Gross cash cover before debt amortisation was 2.3x for the half year.
2026 dividend target reaffirmed at 7.55p per share, representing a c. 10% dividend yield at the current share price
Chair’s Statement
The Renewables Infrastructure Group’s strategy is focused on offering shareholders a compelling total return proposition underpinned by resilient income. Our H1 2026 underlying portfolio performance demonstrates progress against this. Looking ahead, I am confident that we will maintain this strategic momentum through active management of our diversified portfolio, disciplined capital allocation and by reinvesting into higher-returning proprietary opportunities that are funded through retained cash, debt capacity and portfolio rotation.
At TRIG’s 2026 Annual General Meeting, the Company held its first continuation vote, which passed with a 99.3% majority. This demonstrates strong shareholder support for the strategy we set out at our Capital Markets Seminar in May 2026, when we articulated our disciplined approach to capital allocation and the Managers detailed the key levers to support resilient income generation and long-term capital growth creation. I would like to extend my thanks to our shareholders for their support and extensive engagement.
While the share price discount to NAV has narrowed in the first half of the year, it remains elevated, and we continue to take action to support a sustainable share price recovery. In May 2026, a clear capital realisation target was set of £400m over the subsequent 12 months to May 2027, principally from asset disposals and complemented by modest debt issuance. We are pleased with the strong start made against this objective, having signed an agreement to sell TRIG’s 17.5% stake in the Beatrice offshore wind farm for c. £155m. The sale process benefited from price competition from a number of bidding parties. Nonetheless, the market for asset sales remains challenging. Further divestment processes are underway.
Capital realised will be deployed in line with the Board’s capital allocation priorities of reducing RCF borrowings, returning capital to shareholders and investing in higher-returning proprietary internal opportunities within TRIG’s existing portfolio. The Board remains focused on disciplined capital allocation to drive shareholder returns and will continue to consider carefully the right balance between retaining capital for accretive growth and returning capital to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. At the current share price, and subject to meeting the capital realisation target, the Board expects to continue to buy back the Company’s shares beyond the current £150m programme, of which £123m had been deployed at 6 August 2026 having repurchased 158 million shares.
The resilience and robustness of TRIG’s underlying business model is reflected in our Interim Results for the first half of the year, with £209m of operational cash generated,1 which restores net dividend cover to 1.1 times in line with our long-term target. Net dividend cover is stated after the scheduled repayment of £111m of project-level debt for the half year. Gross cash cover before project-level debt repayment was 2.3 times. The structure of TRIG’s balance sheet remains conservative with long-term debt representing 39% of enterprise value, once the announced disposal is completed. Approximately 90% of debt across the Group is fixed interest rate and amortising over the period of fixed-price revenues. TRIG’s RCF balance as at 30 June 2026 was £276m, with £155m disposal proceeds from the sale of Beatrice expected in H2 2026 to be applied principally to reduce this balance further.
The Board remains committed to delivering resilient income to shareholders and I am pleased to reaffirm the dividend target for 2026 of 7.55p per share, which represents a c. 10% dividend yield at the current share price.2
The Company’s NAV per share as at 30 June 2026 was 101.1p, a 2.9p reduction to the 31 December 2025 NAV, driven principally by the mechanical flow through of reductions in third-party revenue price forecasts from both projected power prices (including the UK Government’s announcement of the early removal of Carbon Price Support in April 2026) and green certificate income across all countries in which TRIG has investments. While power prices are currently elevated, commodity market pricing assumes swift resolution of the conflict in the Middle East. In the medium term, independent forecasters expect greater US gas supply to result in lower gas prices and also faster renewables build-out reducing the price captured by renewables generators. Earnings per share for the period was 0.1p, reflecting the movement in portfolio valuation.
There have been two policy announcements in the UK in 2026 that are potentially helpful for renewables valuations but are yet to be reflected in the portfolio valuation. Power price forecasts do not yet include the potential benefit from the high volume of long-duration storage contracts expected to be awarded in the UK, which could increase the price captured by renewables generators. TRIG’s valuation does not include the potential benefit from use of the Wholesale Contract-for-Difference in the UK, which is expected to provide an additional path to fixed price revenues in the medium term.
Active portfolio management remains central to TRIG’s strategy, supported by disciplined portfolio rotation and reinvestment, developing and constructing new projects, revenue management and operational enhancements.
Key highlights of strategic progress made by the Managers include:
sale of TRIG’s 17.5% interest in the Beatrice offshore wind farm for c. £155m;
issuance of £200m of amortising private placement debt at a 5.23% interest rate, maintaining low interest rate risk and low refinancing risk, terming out a significant portion of the RCF;
build-out of our development pipeline, with c. 200MW in construction. The Ryton battery project is expected to be energised in autumn 2026, while the repowering of the Cuxac onshore wind farm in France is progressing well with the new, higher-capacity turbines now being installed on site;
placing of revenue price fixes to improve revenue visibility. In June, the Gode offshore wind farm signed a new seven-year offtake agreement with Ørsted; and in February and March, when power prices were relatively elevated, a number of projects entered into short-term price fixes for 560GWh of expected generation out to the end of 2028; and
progression of operational enhancements programme with blade hardware and software upgrades continuing to be rolled out across the portfolio.
In total, value enhancement activities have added £40m to the portfolio valuation from 1 January 2025 to 30 June 2026. However, the £70m value enhancement target across 2025 and 2026 has been revised to £55m. This results from a delay in the rollout of hardware and software upgrades to turbines made by a particular manufacturer; delays to grid connection dates; and capital allocation decisions. Beyond 2026, the Managers will continue to drive value enhancements through active portfolio management, in particular from TRIG’s development and construction pipeline, which is subject to capital allocation decisions.
Value enhancement activities optimise TRIG’s high-quality portfolio of renewables assets located across the UK and Europe. In H1 2026, our 2.3GW portfolio of renewables infrastructure assets produced 2.9TWh of clean electricity. Of the portfolio’s revenue 64%3 are fixed per MWh generated over the next ten years. Together with conservative gearing, this deliberate approach to revenue and balance sheet management is unique among listed renewables investment companies and gives the Board flexibility when evolving the strategy and maximising long-term returns for shareholders.
On 1 July 2026, the Company’s investment and operations management fees were altered to be based solely on market capitalisation. This equates to a further 19% reduction in fees in addition to the 28% reduction secured by the Board in 2025. This change in fee basis further aligns the interests of the Managers with those of shareholders. The pro forma operating expenses ratio is expected to reduce to 0.83% following the implementation of the new fee basis.
Outlook
The relevance of the energy transition has never been greater with macroeconomic events and the growing adoption of energy-intensive technologies, including AI, increasing demand for secure and domestically generated electricity across the UK and Europe. Renewables and batteries remain central to this shift, reflected in the policies of governments and strategies of corporates. The UK Government’s recent Call for Evidence in relation to the use of Corporate Power Purchase Agreements is aligned with TRIG’s strategy and highlighted the importance of such agreements with renewables generators in achieving long-term and affordable energy resilience for corporates, independent of their additional sustainability benefits.
TRIG’s portfolio provides investors with immediate access to this key megatrend as Europe’s energy market accelerates towards energy security at scale. TRIG offers value and scale through its diversified portfolio and sizeable development pipeline, both of which are actively managed by two expert Managers. As set out at the Capital Markets Seminar, the TRIG Board continues to believe that the Company has the key characteristics to deliver long-term attractive value to shareholders.
