These seven dividend stocks are still secure despite the coronavirus
This has been the most traumatic year for dividend investors
since 2008, if not longer. Major blue-chip companies have been announcing
dividend cuts or suspensions almost every day. Last Tuesday, Disney (NYSE:DIS)
joined the crowd with its shocking decision to not pay its dividend for the
first half of 2020. And in the high-yield space, it’s been an absolute
bloodbath. Whole segments of the market, like energy, mortgage REITs and
business development companies have seen their payments shrivel up. It’s
looking grim for many dividend stocks.
Consider this. In 2008, it took the S&P 500 a subsequent
three years to reach a new record dividend payout. If you owned an index
exchange-traded fund in 2007, you were earning more income by the end of 2011.
This time around, it appears the damage will last a lot longer.
The CME Group (NASDAQ:CME) lists dividend futures contracts,
which are settled based on how many dividends one unit of the S&P 500 pays
out over a year.
If you owned one “share” of the S&P 500 last year, it
would have been worth around $3,000 and it paid out $56 in dividends in 2019.
That’s as you’d expect. The S&P 500, as an index, has yielded around 2%
recently. And normally, the index pays more and more dividends every year.
Now, however, the novel coronavirus has messed that up. The
dividend futures suggest that the S&P 500 will only pay out $50 this year,
marking an 11% drop from 2019. For 2021, dividends will be down again to just
$44. It won’t be until 2026 that dividends get back to 2019’s level of $56 per
unit of the index.
If you use index funds, that’s a depressing outlook.
Meanwhile, inflation keeps ticking on, eroding purchasing power. There’s a
solution to this unpleasant forecast: Pick dividend stocks that can maintain
their payouts despite the sour economic conditions at present.
Here are seven such dividend stocks that are standing tall
despite the coronavirus:
No comments:
Post a Comment