Income investors love dividend stocks for their regular payouts; any stock-price appreciation is just gravy. The Kiplinger Dividend 15, the list of our favorite dividend-paying stocks, delivers on the first front, yielding 3.4%, on average, compared with a 1.9% yield for Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and a 1.7% yield for the 10-year Treasury bond. What’s more, over the past year, our list has slathered on the gravy, too, returning 13.6%, on average, counting dividends and price appreciation, compared with a 4.3% return for the S&P 500. (Prices and other data are as of September 30.)
Big gains don’t come without some strings attached. Like many stocks that have ridden this record-long bull market, some of the names on our list appear to be richly valued now. And although dividends buttress returns when a stock’s price slides, pricey stocks could take a big hit in the event of a stock market plunge. Perhaps more salient for dividend investors, major boosts in the share price diminish a stock’s yield, as is the case with Blackstone Group and Realty Income—two stocks originally chosen for our list because, among other things, they historically provided yields above 4%. Although they’ve slipped below that bar, we’re not yet ready to jettison them for performing too well, and we believe that their yields can return to historical averages. We’re keeping an eye on them, but we’re making no changes to the list at present.
The Dividend 15 are divided into three categories: stocks with a long history of stable dividends, stocks with the potential for rapid growth in their payouts, and high yielders.
Dividend stalwarts.
This story is from the December 2019 edition of Kiplinger's Personal Finance.
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This story is from the December 2019 edition of Kiplinger's Personal Finance.
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