Many dividend investors pick stocks simply for their yield. This could be detrimental to investment returns, since most high yielding stocks are concentrated in few sectors and distribute almost all of their earnings. This leaves the dividend payment exposed to fluctuations in operating performance. Most successful dividend investors on the other hand tend to focus on companies that have solid fundamentals. Only such companies can afford to raise dividends consistently over the long run. Despite the importance of dividends however, investors should not forget about capital gains are important as well, particularly because they provide the other 50%-60% of annual total returns.
The beauty of dividends is that they are always positive; they don't fluctuate as much as the price returns, and as such present a somewhat more stable source of income.The truth is that dividend investors also diversify across the ten major sectors, and also geographies, continents, industries etc. Academic studies cite that company specific risk is reduced substantially in a diversified portfolio consisting of 30-40 securities from different sectors of market. Thus a portfolio of 30 companies should perform similarly to the returns of S&P 500 (the market). If you compared the returns of Dow Jones Industrials Average, which is a subjectively selected portfolio of 30 stocks, you would notice its returns are close to that of S&P 500. The latter has 470 stocks more than the Dow Industrials Average. As a result, investors do not need to own more than 30 or 40 individual stocks, in order to generate market like returns.
Source: Dividend Growth Investor
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