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 (SPY), 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... Read more