The Last Retirement Income Stock You’ll Ever Need to Own
It has never once reduced its monthly dividend since it went public in 2007 — not through 2008, not since — and it sends a bonus check four times a year on top
I’m going to give you the whole thing right now. The name, the ticker, the reasoning. No teaser, nothing held back.
The stock is Main Street Capital (NYSE: MAIN).
I’ve owned it since November 2015. In that time it has paid me every single month without exception, raised the payment steadily, and added a bonus check four times a year on top. It’s up about 188% while doing it.
If you only ever bought one income stock, I’d want it to be this one.
What it actually does
Main Street lends money to mid-sized private American businesses — the kind that used to walk into a regional bank and can’t anymore.
It currently has investments in roughly 189 different companies, averaging about $22 million apiece. Hotels. Oil producers. Online retailers. Health care providers. Construction firms. The loans are secured, and they usually come with an equity stake attached, which is where the upside lives — Main Street doesn’t just collect interest, it owns a slice of the businesses it finances.
There’s a nice symmetry in the name. Wall Street stopped serving these companies after the financial crisis, when regulation pushed banks out of the business. Main Street stepped in. And the income flows to ordinary investors rather than institutions.
The record
Here’s what makes it unusual.
More than 200 consecutive monthly dividends. Not quarterly. Monthly, every month, since 2008.
Never once cut. Not in 2008, when a great many financial companies slashed or eliminated their payouts entirely. Main Street kept paying, and kept raising.
Sixteen paydays a year. Twelve regular monthly dividends of $0.265 a share, plus a supplemental dividend of $0.30 four times a year. Over the past twelve months that came to $4.31 per share.
At a recent price around $56, that works out to roughly 7.8% — against a market currently paying 1.07%.
You’ll sometimes see it quoted lower, around 5.4%. That’s the regular monthly payment counted on its own, without the supplementals. When I first recommended it I wrote that it “either carries a lofty yield of 7.7% or 9.2%, depending on your point of view.” Both numbers were honest. Either way, as I said then, it spends just the same.
What it pays me
This is the part most investors never think about.
When you buy a stock, your cost basis is fixed permanently. Every dividend from that day forward is measured against what you paid — not what the next buyer pays.
I bought Main Street in November 2015. On my original cost, it now pays 14.37% a year.
A buyer today gets 7.5%. That’s an excellent yield and I’d take it happily. But it isn’t my yield, and it never will be — that particular door closed in 2015 and no amount of money reopens it.
Which is worth thinking about, given where the market is heading. In the 1980s the average American stock paid 4.2%. Today the S&P 500 pays 1.07%. Reliable income is getting scarcer every year, and the rate you lock in today is the one you keep.
What I’d want you to know before you buy it
I’m not going to hand you a stock without the risks attached.
Main Street lends to smaller private companies, and credit quality is the whole ballgame. A deep recession that hits mid-market borrowers would show up here before it showed up in a blue chip. Last year a short-selling firm published a critical piece arguing the company carries its assets above fair value — I looked hard at that claim and disagreed with it, but you should know the argument exists.
And there’s a limit that has nothing to do with Main Street itself.
It’s one stock.
One management team. One set of credit decisions. One payment date — the middle of the month, which leaves the other three weeks of every month empty.
You don’t build a retirement paycheck out of a single company, however good it is. You build it out of a handful, chosen the same way, arranged so the money keeps arriving.
Where to go from here
There are six more companies I’d put in this category — still paying 4%, 6%, 7% and better while the rest of the market drifts toward nothing. I track what each one yielded on the day we bought it, so you can see exactly how far each door has already closed.
I also keep a payment calendar showing how to arrange these holdings so a check lands in every week of every month, not just the third one. And a list of which holdings send a simple 1099 at tax time instead of a partnership K-1 — because only three of our holdings send a K-1 at all.
That work lives inside High-Yield Investing, along with the ongoing part that matters most: telling you when something changes. Main Street is a buy today. If that stops being true, subscribers hear it from me first.
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Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Dividends can be reduced or eliminated at any time, and supplemental dividends are irregular by nature. All figures as of September 15, 2026 and subject to change. Investing Daily is not a registered investment adviser or broker/dealer; this report is informational and does not constitute personalized investment advice. Questions: customerservice@investingdaily.com