What kind of stocks offer good dividends?

Answer 1

The trick to finding good stocks is doing some research. The prices of stocks are continually changing, and so the yield ( dividend as a percentage of price) is constantly changing. You'll have to set some criteria and then look around for stocks that meet the criteria.

Answer 2

Any decent stock screener will give you a list of the top-yielding (dividend) stocks. I like the screeners at Morningstar and Moneycentral best. The Morningstar one is fast and easy, the Moneycentral one has more screening options.

Good dividend stocks include a lot of well-established, solid companies, but also there are a few other areas like REITs that usually pay decent dividends.

If you want a relatively safe bet with good dividends, stick with the 10 highest-yielding stocks that are in the Dow Industrials index. In order of current dividend yield, these are currently:

Citigroup, Pfizer, Altria, Verizon, AT&T,
JP Morgan, DuPont, Merck, GE, Home Depot

I personally have money currently in Citi and Pfizer. Citi's latest stock price drop made it a fairly good bargain for the long-term investor.

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P.S. The above was written 10Oct before Citi's upwards jump on 11Oct -- didn't want to confuse anyone! Still a good deal but not quite as much of a bargain as it was for a couple of days there...

Answer 3

Morgan Stanley(MS) just gave out $0.39 a share today....otherwise, look into stocks like Goldman Sachs (GS) and other bluechips.