easy income portfolio

The income markets are in one of those strange moods where the headlines sound worse than the actual credit data. That does not mean we ignore the headlines. Private credit redemption requests are rising. BDC dividend coverage is getting thinner. CMBS delinquencies remain elevated, especially in...

The income markets have entered the month in a strange but still investable condition. Public credit markets are acting as though the world is just fine. Private credit is acting as though someone finally turned on the lights in a crowded room. Energy income has been helped by higher oil and LNG...

The portfolio remains fully intact this month, with all positions carried over and no changes to the underlying lineup. What stands out is not turnover, but how different parts of the portfolio are behaving under the surface. This is exactly the kind of environment the strategy is designed for....

This has been one of those months when the income portfolio gets to do exactly what it was built to do. We are not trying to win a beauty contest in a straight-up momentum market. We are trying to collect fat cash flows from a wide mix of income-producing assets, keep duration and credit risk...

Credit Markets, Income Assets, and the Software Panic That Wasn't This has been one of those months where the big indexes look calm but the machinery underneath the market keeps shifting. Credit spreads remain historically tight, yet interest rate volatility has picked up just enough to remind...

The first thing I do every month when I sit down to write Easy Income is ask a simple question: what is the market paying us to take risk right now? This month's answer is that credit markets still look relaxed.Spreads are tight, liquidity is solid, and the new-issue market is open for business....

Income investors live in a world that rarely matches the headlines. The news cycle obsesses over every tick in rates and every rumor out of the Federal Reserve. Our job is much simpler. We collect income. We protect capital. We position the portfolio so that market fear creates opportunity rather...

Welcome to the November edition of the Easy Income Portfolio Review—our steady hand amid the noise, focused on what actually puts cash in the account each month. While markets remain obsessed with every tick in the ten-year yield and every whisper about rate cuts, our corner of the world kept doing...

The macro tape continues to reward patience. Growth is slowing from the summer pace while inflation progress remains uneven. The term premium drifted higher again during late September which kept longer yields sticky even as the market penciled in additional cuts for 2026. That cocktail kept...

Market and Economic BackdropSeptember has been a month of mixed signals across global markets. Inflation remains sticky, with shelter, services, and insurance costs continuing to put upward pressure on consumer prices. The Federal Reserve has signaled patience but has not yet delivered the long-...

It is supposed to be easy. And it is. The Easy Income portfolio has a current yield of 9.7%. The beta is .69 so it is far less volatile than the broader equity market. This portfolio is designed to have a high sleep at night factor. Much of the income is paid monthly so there is constantly a steady...

It seems at times like the noise is never ending. This is especially true if you have not yet employed one of the important survival techniques of the 21st century: Turn off the news channels. For many years I kept the financial news network on in the office to make sure I did not miss any breaking...

Welcome to the Easy Income update for June. The markets remain volatile, though perhaps not as volatile as they were in April during the announcement of Liberation Day tariffs. The market has recovered 1.6 percent, a solid comeback. Over the last week, we have been essentially flat. Bonds have not...

It has been anything but a quiet month in markets but quiet is exactly what the Easy Income Portfolio has achieved once again. The tariff and trade noise has caused violent moves in the markets, and we have missed almost all of them. We just wrapped up a pretty interesting stretch for the portfolio...

Welcome to this month's Easy Income Portfolio update — or, as we've been calling it around here, the bouncy portfolio. Over the last month, prices have done their fair share of hopping around like a rabbit on a trampoline. But while the net asset values have jiggled and jumped, the income has...