Standard & Poor's has speculated that the dollar amount of S&P 500 dividend payments will drop 10% in the fourth quarter, the biggest drop since 1958. However, more than half of companies will pay more in 2008 vs. 2007. This oddity is driven by the banks, which have historically paid some of the highest dividends. As any dividend investor can tell you, the banks have led the way in dividend cuts. In September and October, 16 financial companies cut their dividend payments by $14.6 billion.
S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats is designed to measure the performance of S&P 500 index constituents that have followed a policy of consistently increasing dividends every year for at least 25 consecutive years. The constituents are equally weighted and rebalanced each quarter. Members are removed during the December update if calendar-year dividends did not increase from the previous year, or they are removed intra-year if the stock is dropped from the underlying S&P 500.
Dividend investors have a lot to be thankful for. The 60 companies making up the Dividend Aristocrats have outperformed the S&P 500 index year-to-date by almost 12 percentage points.
SmartMoney recently published a dividend growth stock screen with the following criteria:
That screen produced the following 6 stocks:
Of the stocks that I have reviewed, I currently rate:
After running the remaining 3 companies through my D4L-PreScreen.xls model, BDK with a NPV of MMA Differential of $49,200 qualifies for a more complete evaluation. However, since it is time for a dividend increase and BDK has only increased its dividend for 5 consecutive years, I would wait to see what the company does prior to performing a full evaluation. DRI has only seriously raised their dividend for the last 3 years. GRMN has only paid a dividend (annual) since 2003.
As always, you should never act solely on a screen or recommendation. You should perform your own research and reach your own conclusion before buying or selling an investment security.
Sources:
S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats
6 Stocks With Improving Dividends
Full Disclosure: At the time of this writing, I was long in CAT, INTC, PFE
Related Articles:
_____________________________________________________________________
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts Last 30 Days
-
Do you need more income? Join the crowd. It seems everyone is scouring the landscape these days for decent income investments to beef up the...
-
There are some dividend aristocrats which have not only maintained but increased their dividends for over half a century. Having survived ev...
-
In bull markets, dividends become more or less irrelevant. When the Dow Jones Industrial Average traded above 14,000 in 2007, very few stoc...
-
While I've invested a decent portion of my portfolio into growth stocks, a significant part of my holdings consists of dividend-paying s...
-
All too often when a cheap stock offers a high dividend yield, it's too good to be true. Perhaps the stock has plunged with good reason,...
-
Stocks can make for amazing investments, offering better long-term returns than bonds, precious metals, and most other commonly available in...
-
If it's dividends you're after, there are plenty of top companies to consider, particularly those on the Dow Jones Industrial Averag...
-
Investors hear about dividend aristocrats all the time. It’s a fantastic thing if a company raises its dividend every year for 25 years runn...
-
Anxiety over the European debt crisis and distrust in the markets drove volatility in global stock markets to dizzying heights in 2011. The ...
-
To alert investors of stocks that have the highest risk of reducing their current dividend in the future, Simply Safe Dividends created a Di...
0 comments
Post a Comment
Post a Comment