donzelion

22 Stocks on the Dividend Aristocrats List That May Spell Trouble

Good review of the basic problems with several dividend achievers. I'd also be curious what the pension liabilities look like; seems that for many of these older companies, replenishing serious losses to the pension will squeeze dividends even more.

That said, picking from the best companies that are also stable dividend payers seems to make good sense to me. I still like ADM and WMT; there's relatively few good options among dividend payers in their respective sectors, and to me, diversification is almost as important as healthy dividend payouts.

81 Dividend Growers to Consider

While I share David's priorities (yield, safety, consistency), I do take modest positions in companies with slightly lower yields for the sake of sectoral diversification (e.g., some industries are allergic to dividends, others consistently overdo it - like financials up to '08, and I don't want my portfolio to consist entirely of mega-caps).

Dividend Aristocrats Will Continue to Outperform

Beg to differ with Whidbey. Historically, dividends were offered to lure investors to buy a stock when investors were squeamish about the integrity of the manager and skeptical about company financials. Hindsight lets us impute additional motives to investors, but nobody investing in dividend payers in 1930 knew which companies would continue to exist as dividend paying enterprises. Dividends have as much staying power as investors have skepticism about management.

Ultimately, the driving factors aren't so different from fees at mutual funds - a dividend payer may or may not be a better run company, just as a fund's stock picker may or may not be a smarter stock picker, but reasonable dividends/low fees translates into advantages that compound over time.