5 Dividend Standouts Yielding Up To 6%

If you're frustrated by the paltry 2% yield of the average stock in the S&P 500, you're not alone. Thankfully, you don't have to reach for yield by investing in unstable companies or engineer a complex options strategy just to get little extra income. Readers of my High-Yield Investing newsletter know that it's just a matter of knowing where to look.
These five stocks offer more than double the average yield of the U.S. equity market -- and have far outperformed it. The S&P 500, gained about 2% in 2011, including dividends, but these standouts actually delivered average total returns of 35.4% in the same 10 months.
Their long-term performance is just as impressive. In the past half decade, they returned an average 11% a year, while stocks in the S&P 500 are at break-even.
To find these income plays, I screened for steady, reliable dividend payers that grew both dividends and earnings in good times and bad.
Over the past five years, these companies hiked their dividends an average of 6% a year. They are an exemplary group of dividend growers, considering that the 500 industry-leading companies in the S&P 500 actually reduced their dividends by 1% annually over the same five years.
And 6% is just an average. Pipeline partnership Sunoco Logistics (NYSE: SXL) and tobacco maker Reynolds American (NYSE: RAI) put in double-digit increases of 10% annually during the past five years.
Moreover, these shareholder-friendly companies have the wherewithal to support their dividend increases.123... Read more