Recently, I made a move in my portfolio and trimmed down some of my holdings in AT&T (NYSE: T) . The decision was largely driven by a strong gut feeling born from personal observation: over the past few months, it seemed like almost everyone around me was complaining about their coverage and making the jump over to Verizon. When you hear the same sentiment repeated across multiple conversations, it’s easy to assume that a company is quietly bleeding market share. But when AT&T delivered its Q2 2026 earnings report , the hard data told a completely different story. The Q2 2026 Reality Check Far from experiencing a mass customer exodus, AT&T actually reported solid operational momentum in its core mobility segment: Subscribers: Added 432,000 postpaid phone net subscribers in Q2 alone, backed by near-historical low churn rates. Earnings: Adjusted EPS came in at $0.65 , beating Wall Street expectations ($0.59–$0.60). Free Cash Flow: Generated $4.7 billion ...
While I'm building more of my systematic, high-yield dividend retention engine, the ultimate challenge isn’t just chasing the highest nominal yield… it’s balancing my capital structure priority against macroeconomic interest rate risk. Two popular monthly income vehicles frequently surface on my radar in this domain: the Global X Variable Rate Preferred ETF (NYSE Arca: PFFV) and the First Trust Senior Floating Rate Income Fund II (NYSE: FCT) . While I see both engines turning over predictable monthly cash distributions, they operate on completely different mechanical levels under the hood of my Augmented Income Strategy. Here is my deep structural breakdown of their history, dividend performance, and how I'm evaluating their forward-looking risk profiles. The Underlying Machinery: How I View PFFV and FCT To understand these assets, I have to look closely at where they sit on a corporation's balance sheet. 1. First Trust Senior Floating Rate Income Fund II (FCT) I ...