{"id":223560,"date":"2026-01-08T17:17:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T17:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/223560\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T17:17:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T17:17:11","slug":"my-plan-for-7-9-dividends-from-the-ai-boom-hint-it-began-in-1854","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/223560\/","title":{"rendered":"My Plan for 7.9% Dividends From the AI Boom (Hint: It Began in 1854)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The run that AI poster child NVIDIA (NVDA) has been on these last few years is truly incredible. That&#8217;s not news, of course. But what matters now is whether investors are overpaying for that growth&#8211;in both NVIDIA and AI as a whole.<\/p>\n<p>NVIDIA&#8217;s Monstrous Run<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-37460\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/NVDA-Total-Returns.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"539\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>Once a chipmaker known for appealing mainly to gamers, NVIDIA started to climb in 2023, thanks to a new technology only a few people really understood at the time: generative AI.<\/p>\n<p>Then, as AI spread in 2024, hopes&#8211;and NVIDIA&#8217;s stock&#8211;soared. That was followed by more fears of a bubble in AI. As with NVIDIA&#8217;s share price, a chart is the best way to do these worries justice:<\/p>\n<p>The Bubble in Worries About an AI Bubble <br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-37459\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/AI-Bubble-Fears.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"710\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s so much discussion of an AI bubble now that we seem to be in a bubble of talking about bubbles! That&#8217;s why some advisors are saying that this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomadvisors.com\/is-the-ai-bubble-talk-a-distraction-why-long-term-investors-should-tune-out-the-hype\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AI bubble talk is a distraction<\/a>. I&#8217;d agree, as we can&#8217;t even be sure this is a bubble&#8211;and I&#8217;d argue it&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p>To see why I&#8217;m saying this, we need to look no further than NVIDIA shares. Consider this table of their performance in the last four years.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-37458\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/NVDA-Yearly-Returns.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"395\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>Here I&#8217;ve broken out NVDA&#8217;s per-year returns since 2022, a year in which the stock plunged alongside all of tech. Note how its biggest year was in 2023, and that its gains have been moderating since?<\/p>\n<p>If this were really a bubble, you&#8217;d expect yearly gains to keep building and building until they hit a wall. That&#8217;s not the case here. In fact, I&#8217;d argue that we&#8217;re seeing a massively undervalued company becoming a fairly valued one.<\/p>\n<p>To really unpack this, let&#8217;s look at how much investors are paying for NVIDIA&#8217;s earnings. We&#8217;ll do that by looking at the stock&#8217;s price-to-earnings (P\/E) ratio (in purple below). As you can see, it roughly matches that of &#8220;boring&#8221; big-box retailer Costco (COST)!<\/p>\n<p>Is NVIDIA Really Worth as Much as &#8230;Costco?<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-37457\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/NVDA-Price-Earnings-Ratio.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"602\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>I think you&#8217;ll agree that Costco, with its membership-driven revenue, is a pretty reliable revenue generator. This shows that investors are starting to see NVIDIA the same way.<\/p>\n<p>Note also that NVIDIA&#8217;s P\/E ratio trailed that of Costco for most of 2025.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, this is not a bubbly valuation. And in fact, none of the &#8220;Magnificent 7&#8221; stocks sport higher valuations than Costco right now. That is, except for Tesla (TSLA), which in many ways lives in its own little world.<\/p>\n<p>To be sure, some aspects of the AI space do look bubbly, like the 700 seed-stage rounds that attracted $10 million or more in 2025. This shows that venture capitalists are indeed making some outrageous bets here.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s not a sign of a bubble. In fact, I heard the same worries about VC overinvestment in the early 2010s (if you don&#8217;t remember <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Juicero\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Juicero<\/a>, it was a great example of VC silliness), when I worked on Wall Street. The market powered higher anyway.<\/p>\n<p>But what about all the infrastructure investments we hear about, especially around data centers? One report says we saw about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/us-data-center-build-hits-record-ai-demand-surges-bank-america-institute-says-2025-09-10\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a 30% growth<\/a> rate in data-center spending in the middle of 2025, to about $40 billion on an annualized basis, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federalreserve.gov\/econres\/notes\/feds-notes\/the-state-of-ai-competition-in-advanced-economies-20251006.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Fed estimates<\/a> about $41.2 billion. But both sources also cite rapid growth in building back in 2023 and 2024, so the 2025 rate actually moderated compared to 2024.<\/p>\n<p>If we look at total private construction of non-residential properties, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.census.gov\/construction\/c30\/historical_data.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">as provided by the Census Bureau<\/a>, a similar story appears.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-37456\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/New-Construction.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"494\"  \/><br \/>Source: US Census Bureau, CEF Insider<\/p>\n<p>Here we can see spending growth on data-center construction (gray line) far outpacing all nonresidential spending (orange line) and overall private-sector spending (blue) in late 2023 and 2024. That was actually the case in the late 2010s, as well.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, data-center spending looks like it&#8217;s simply going back to where it was pre-pandemic. It&#8217;s also worth noting that the growth rate has been slowing since peaking in late 2023, much like NVIDIA&#8217;s stock-price growth has been moderating since then, too. In other words, this is clearly not a bubble&#8211;if anything, the bubbly numbers looked most alarming in late 2023.<\/p>\n<p>How I&#8217;m Playing the AI &#8220;Non-Bubble&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s the best approach for us here?<\/p>\n<p>For one, the data says this market is not acting irrationally. On the contrary, valuations suggest a mature market, and our best play is to remain fully invested and diversified.<\/p>\n<p>Most people would go with an index fund like the SPDR S&amp;P 500 ETF (SPY) in a situation like this. But we want dividends, and SPY&#8217;s sad 1% yield just won&#8217;t cut it.<\/p>\n<p>In this market, while we wait for AI to continue its spread through the US economy, getting a big slice of our return in cash dividends is key. That&#8217;s why we prefer a <a href=\"https:\/\/contrarianoutlook.com\/how-to-invest-in-cefs-for-8-dividends-20-upside\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">closed-end fund (CEF)<\/a> like the Adams Diversified Equity Fund (ADX), a long-time holding of my <a href=\"https:\/\/contrarianoutlook.com\/4-a-i-funds-v2\/CTA010826MF\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CEF Insider<\/a> service.<\/p>\n<p>ADX is a proven long-term wealth generator, both in the form of dividends and capital gains. Since we bought the 7.9%-yielding fund in July 2017, it&#8217;s returned 243% in gains and dividends, as of this writing, soundly beating the S&amp;P 500.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Dividend-Powered&#8221; ADX Beats the Market in the Long Term &#8230;<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-37455\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ADX-Total-Returns.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"586\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s thanks to management&#8217;s stock-picking skills (ADX holds NVIDIA, along with many other top S&amp;P 500 stocks). Their acumen stems from ADX&#8217;s long institutional memory: The fund traces its roots back to 1854&#8211;yes, the mid-nineteenth century.<\/p>\n<p>And then there&#8217;s that income stream, responsible for a big slice of the fund&#8217;s total return: ADX&#8217;s 7.9% yield is roughly seven times that of the typical S&amp;P 500 stock (note that ADX&#8217;s payouts do flex somewhat, based on its portfolio performance).<\/p>\n<p>The odd thing about CEFs like ADX is that when investors judge their performance, they tend to only look at price returns, not total returns (including dividends), <a href=\"https:\/\/contrarianoutlook.com\/dump-this-bad-habit-to-find-the-best-7-5-dividends-in-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">as we discussed last week<\/a>. And on a price basis, ADX returned 15.5% in 2025, just less than the 16.4% of an S&amp;P 500 index fund. But add reinvested dividends and you&#8217;ll see that ADX (in purple below) easily beat the market.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; And the Short Term, Too<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-37454\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ADX-Outperforms.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"544\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>CEFs like ADX are nicely set to keep outrunning a rising stock market. Anyone who&#8217;s letting bubble fears keep them out of the market (and this great fund) are missing out&#8211;on both the income and the capital gains side.<\/p>\n<p>4 URGENT January Buys to Tap AI&#8217;s &#8220;Next Wave&#8221; (for 8%+ Dividends)<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to AI investing in 2026, one thing is crystal clear: The biggest gains will come from the users of the technology. As we saw with NVIDIA above, the biggest profits in AI developers have already been made.<\/p>\n<p>But luckily for us, these users of AI&#8211;those companies that are just starting to see the benefits&#8211;include many dividend stocks we all know well.<\/p>\n<p>And when we buy those stocks through CEFs like ADX, we get an extra &#8220;bonus&#8221;: These funds&#8217; rich 8%+ dividends. I&#8217;m not pulling that 8% figure out of thin air: It&#8217;s the average yield on my top 4 AI-focused CEFs to buy now.<\/p>\n<p>These 4 funds are dialed into the &#8220;next wave&#8221; of the AI boom. Between them, they hold a basket of undervalued stocks from across the AI space, including those best positioned to supercharge their profits as they adopt this revolutionary technology.<\/p>\n<p>All 4 funds are cheap now, but that won&#8217;t last as the crowd begins to look beyond the popular AI stocks for bargains (and dividends).<\/p>\n<p>The time to buy is now. <a href=\"https:\/\/contrarianoutlook.com\/4-a-i-funds-v2\/CTA010826MF\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Click here and I&#8217;ll walk you through these 8%-paying AI funds and give you a free Special Report revealing their names and tickers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\tAlso see:<br \/>\n\t\u0095 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dividendchannel.com\/slideshows\/warren-buffett-dividend-stocks\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Warren Buffett Dividend Stocks<\/a><br \/>\n\t\u0095 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dividendchannel.com\/slideshows\/dividend-growth-stocks\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dividend Growth Stocks: 25 Aristocrats<\/a><br \/>\n\t\u0095 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dividendchannel.com\/slideshows\/future-dividend-aristocrats-contenders\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Future Dividend Aristocrats: Close Contenders<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"body__disclaimer\">The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The run that AI poster child NVIDIA (NVDA) has been on these last few years is truly incredible.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-223560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}