Read online💰Dividend DispatchINCOME IS EVERYWHERE. I FIND IT. WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2026·6 min readTODAY’S THEME Income from four places you might not expect a check from Wednesday is when I get to share the ideas that make people text me a screenshot and say “wait, that pays a dividend?” Today: the company that builds every U.S. Navy nuclear aircraft carrier — quarterly check of $1.38 a share. The largest billboard owner in North America. An ETF that gets paid for selling other people’s option premium — yielding 10.3%monthly. And a mortgage REIT that actually earned its 13% dividend last quarter, which is the opposite of the red flag I pointed out Monday. Different mechanics, same goal: get paid.
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The Weird Yield
Income from places you’d never expectHIIThe only company in America that builds nuclear aircraft carriers — pays a dividendI love this one. Huntington Ingalls Industries is the sole builder of every U.S. Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier — the floating cities the Navy uses to project force around the world. They also build Virginia-class and Columbia-class nuclear submarines, amphibious ships, destroyers. Newport News Shipbuilding traces back to the 19th century. Ingalls to 1938. The combined company was spun out of Northrop Grumman in 2011.
Here’s why I find it interesting. There’s no competitor. You can’t just build a nuclear aircraft carrier in your garage. The skills, the dry docks, the security clearances, the multi-decade contracts — Congress has structurally committed to keeping this capability inside two HII shipyards. Backlog stretches into the 2070s.
The quarterly dividend is $1.38, declared April 29, payable June 12to holders of record May 29.Annualized that’s $5.52. At a roughly $319 stock price the yield is 1.7%, so $10,000 here is about $170 a year. HII has raised the dividend every year for 13 years running. Payout ratio is only 33% — plenty of room.
The risk to know: HII had a rough Q1 report — margins compressed, JPMorgan called it “disappointing.” The shipbuilding business is famously slow and cost-overrun-prone. And the stock can swing hard on a single Pentagon budget headline. But the backlog is real, the moat is the Navy itself, and the dividend keeps growing. Yield: 1.7%$10K invested = $170/yrPaid: QuarterlyLAMRLamar owns 362,000 billboards — and structured itself as a REIT to pay youDrive across any state in the country and you’ve already seen Lamar Advertising’s product. They own more than 362,000 billboards, transit signs, and airport displays across the U.S. and Canada — including 5,400 digital billboards, the biggest digital network in the country.
Here’s the part that delights me. Lamar elected to be a real estate investment trust — a REIT. The “real estate” is the steel and the land underneath each billboard. That tax structure means Lamar has to distribute at least 90% of its taxable income as dividends. So you, the shareholder, get paid like a landlord every time some dentist in Tuscaloosa rents a billboard.
The 2026 quarterly dividend is $1.60 per share, declared back in February. At an annual run rate of $6.40, the yield is about 4.6% on the current $140 stock — so $10,000 here puts $460 a year in your account. Plus a special dividend in December 2025 on top. The dividend has grown about 14% a year over the last five years.
Risk to know: about 78% of Lamar’s billboard revenue is local and regional advertisers. That’s defensive when national ad budgets get cut — your local car dealer still needs to be visible — but in a real recession even the dentist trims spending. And Lamar carries meaningful debt to fund its acquisition machine. As long as billboard cash flows stay durable, the dividend stays funded. Yield: 4.6%$10K invested = $460/yrPaid: Quarterly💰
The High Yield
Today’s best dividend income ideas — 8%+ yields onlyJEPQJPMorgan rents out the upside on Nasdaq stocks — and pays the rent to youHere’s an analogy I use to explain JEPQ. A covered call is like renting out a room in your house — you give up the chance to use that room yourself, but you collect rent every month. JEPQ is JPMorgan doing this on Nasdaq stocks. They own around 100 Nasdaq-100 names and use about 20% of the portfolio to sell call options on the index. The premium people pay for those options becomes the bulk of the monthly distribution.
The yield is 10.3%. The monthly distribution most recently was around $0.51 per share on a stock trading near $59.50. $10,000 invested = about $1,030 a year — roughly $86 a month showing up in your account.
The fund holds about $35 billion in assets and pays the first business day of every month. JEPQ’s last ex-date was May 1; the next is June 1.
The honest catch — and there is one — is that JEPQ caps your upside. In years when the Nasdaq rips higher (like 2024 or so far in 2026), JEPQ captures only part of the gain because some of the upside got sold off as option premium. The trade-off is high monthly income with a smoother ride than the index. And the distribution is taxed mostly as ordinary income, not qualified dividends, so this fund belongs in an IRA, not a taxable account. I own a slice in my IRA. Different job from a buy-and-hold growth stock. Yield: 10.3%$10K invested = $1,030/yrPaid: MonthlyAGNCA 13% monthly check — and yes, I know I called out a mortgage REIT on MondayI know what you’re thinking. Two days ago I told you Two Harbors was on my no-buy list. Now I’m bringing you another mortgage REIT? Let me explain the difference, because this is exactly the kind of distinction that separates okay-income from bad-income.
AGNC is a pure-play agency mortgage REIT. “Agency” means every bond they own is guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Ginnie Mae — backed by the U.S. government. They borrow at short-term repo rates, buy these government-guaranteed mortgages, and pocket the spread. Then they use about 7.4 times leverage to amplify it.
Q1 results dropped April 21. The dividend last quarter cost $0.36 a share. Net spread and dollar-roll income — basically AGNC’s adjusted earnings — came in at $0.42. That’s coverage of about 117%. The monthly $0.12 check was just paid May 11. Annualized that’s $1.44, and at roughly $10.80 a share, the yield is about 13.3%. So $10,000 = $1,330 a year, about $111 a month.
Now the risk, straight. AGNC has cut its dividend twice in the last decade. Tangible book value dropped 5.6% in Q1 as Middle East tensions blew mortgage spreads wider. If the Fed surprises and pauses cuts, repo costs stay elevated. If long rates rip back up, book value takes another hit. The dividend is covered today. Tomorrow is a different question. This is a yield position, sized accordingly — not a foundation. Yield: 13.3%$10K invested = $1,330/yrPaid: Monthly📋
The Extra Yield
This week’s calendars, screens & answersDon’t miss these ex-dates: HTGC goes ex-dividend tomorrow, Thursday May 14 — own it by today’s close to capture the $0.47. Costco’s $1.47 quarterly hits accounts Thursday too. HII’s $1.38 ex-dates May 29. JEPQ’s next monthly is June 1.I ran a screen this morning:companies with U.S. government as the largest customer AND a dividend at least 10 years old. Six names cleared the bar: HII (today’s pick), Lockheed Martin (LMT), General Dynamics (GD), Northrop Grumman (NOC), L3Harris (LHX), and Raytheon (now RTX). LMT pays the highest yield of the group at around 2.8%. Defense dividends are some of the best-funded in the market — backed by multi-year Pentagon contracts and conservative payout ratios. Someone asked me: “If JEPQ collects option premium and AGNC collects mortgage spreads, what happens to both in a recession?” Honest answer — opposite things, often. JEPQ usually does better in flat or down markets because volatility spikes drive higher option premiums. AGNC depends on the yield curve staying steep and stable, so a sharp move either way can hammer book value. Mixing both is one way to diversify your yield engines instead of stacking the same risk. THE DISPATCH Four very different income engines today. HII gets paid to build nuclear aircraft carriers. Lamar gets paid to rent out 362,000 billboards. JEPQ gets paid for selling option premium. AGNC gets paid on government-guaranteed mortgage spreads. Tomorrow we head back to growth — two more Dividend Growth Stars plus the second half of Safety & Watchlist. Until then. — Charlie 💰Dividend Dispatch THE HIGH YIELD · ARISTOCRATS · GROWTH STARS · THE WEIRD YIELD · SAFETY
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