Dividend And Yield

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How to Pick Winning Dividend Stocks

By Don Miller, Contributing Writer, Money Morning - March 22, 2012

Do you need more income? Join the crowd.

It seems everyone is scouring the landscape these days for decent income investments to beef up their monthly take-home - especially now with the price of gas and other everyday items skyrocketing.

But it's not too late to find great dividend stocks. You can still get cold, hard cash on a regular basis by investing in companies that reward loyal investors with substantial dividends.

In fact, if dividend-paying stocks aren't a major part of your portfolio, the odds of being successful in the markets are stacked against you.

Need proof?

An exhaustive study of stock market returns from 1871 through 2003 showed that over a 135-year period owning stocks and reinvesting the dividends produced 97% of all stock market returns. Meanwhile a paltry 3% was produced by capital gains.

Dividend stocks are safer too. The very same qualities that allow companies to pay steady dividends means they're much less vulnerable to broad market drops than your typical stock.

And right now corporate America is willing to pay even more in dividends.

Companies are on pace to pay a record $263 billion in dividends to shareholders over the next year even though the S&P 500 Index is still more than 10% below its peak, according to S&P Capital IQ reports.

"We're seeing good dividend increases across the board," Richard Helm of Cohen & Steers Dividend Value fund told USA Today.

Buying Great Dividend Stocks

It's no secret - a company's dividends play a major role in their performance. Yet many investors completely ignore this important fact.

But you can't just plunk your money down on any old dividend stock.

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How to Safely Double Your Dividend Yield With Covered Call Options

By Larry D. Spears, Contributing Writer, Money Morning - January 19, 2012

As it turns out, despite the summer swoon, income investors were the big winners in 2011.

While the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the year with a gain of just 5.5%, the 100 highest-yielding stocks tracked by the Dow Jones - as measured by the iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend ETF (NYSE: DVY) - returned a market beating 11.73%.

Of course, the question today is whether or not that performance will carry on in 2012.

However, given the contentious nature of the U.S. presidential race, the ongoing turmoil in the Eurozone and the clouds hanging over the global economy, 2012 is looking like it will provide another great year for dividend investors.

The reason stems from what Martin Hutchinson, editor of the Permanent Wealth Investor, discussed last week in his look at dividend stocks.

"The problem with going for capital growth," Martin points out, "is that you very often don't get it, and then you've got nothing - the investment just sits there."

By contrast, Hutchinson added, "Dividends are easy... All you have to do is figure out which companies have genuinely solid business models that aren't going away."

Options Strategy: Boosting Your Yield With Covered Calls

What's more, if you're willing to put in a little extra time and make use of a proven strategy involving call options, you can safely double, triple, or even quadruple the amount of income you receive from your dividend-paying stocks - even if the share price does absolutely nothing.

The technique is known as "writing covered calls," and implementing the strategy is quite simple.

All you do is sell (or write) one out-of-the-money call option - i.e., one with a strike price higher than the stock's current market price - for each 100 shares of the stock you own (the underlying security).

The call is said to be "covered" because you own the underlying shares. As a result, you don't have to put up any added money or "margin" in order to make the trade.

All of the money you receive for selling the calls - the "option premium" - is yours to keep regardless of what happens to the price of the underlying stock.

This "option premium" is then added to your overall gains, boosting the yield you are set to earn from the dividend.

Here's how it works in practice:

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