High dividend stocks / ETF

Many investors don't want to worry about the indicators of investment value, and therefore prefer a simpler strategy which is based on high dividend yield and is called dividend strategy. It depends only on high dividend yield if shares will become part of the index portfolio.

For the purpose of dividend investing there are plenty of dividend indexes. The basis is usually taken from the past payment of dividends, and not from the future (or expected). Broadly used in US is Dogs of Dow or DivDax in Germany.

One of the problem of this strategy is that it can not accurately predict with certainty whether the amount of dividends in the future will be the same as last payments. Another significant important point missing in dividend strategy is stock value. Are shares prices undervalued or overvalued? You will not get answer based on dividend yield.

On the market there are now many ETFs which are in the category of High dividend yield ETF. Here are some high dividend paying funds in US.

Claymore/Zacks Yield Hog ETF (CVY)
ELEMENTS Dogs of the Dow ETN (DOD)
First Trust Morningstar Dividend Leaders Index Fund (FDL)
iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index Fund (DVY)
SPDR S&P Dividend ETF (SDY)
Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF (VYM)

And the list of international high dividend yielding funds traded on US markets.

Middle East Dividend Fund (GULF)
SPDR S&P International Dividend ETF (DWX)
WisdomTree Europe High-Yielding Equity Fund (DEW)
WisdomTree International Dividend Top 100 Fund (DOO)
WisdomTree Japan High-Yielding Equity Fund (DNL)
WisdomTree Pacific ex-Japan High-Yielding Equity Fund (DNH)



As I have mentioned in the beginning of the article, dividend strategy itself has some imperfections. During past two years I have compared US high dividend yielding ETFs with broad equity index ETF iShares S&P 500 Index (IVV). And you see the result at the chart above. For almost the whole period IVV has outperformed all high dividend yield ETFs.