Easy Income Portfolio: August 2026 Edition

The Easy Income portfolio is doing exactly what we built it to do. It is collecting a substantial amount of cash from a diversified group of investments that do not all depend on the same economic outcome, the same interest-rate forecast or the same direction for the stock market. Based on the current portfolio spreadsheet, the average indicated yield across our 14 positions is 10.10%. That is an extraordinary level of portfolio income in an environment where broad credit conditions remain healthy, financial conditions remain loose and many of the securities we own are still priced as though considerably more trouble is coming. That last point is worth spending some time on because it gets to the heart of what is happening in the income markets right now. There are plenty of scary headlines. Private credit defaults have increased. The weakest junk bond borrowers are under pressure. Of...