Dumpster Diving The Dividend Contenders

One man's trash is another man's treasure - UnknownWhat a difference a few weeks makes! On October 17th, I wrote an article highlighting some of the potentially undervalued members of the Dividend Champions List. At that time, 27 of the 107 members of the list were trading within 5% of their 52-week lows. Now, just a few weeks later, only Stepan Company (NYSE: SCL) remains down at those levels. Meanwhile the market has recovered from its pullback and recently hit new all-time highs.Here is the list of the stocks that were recommended in that article, and how they have performed since it was published.The selections have done well so far, as they have all provided positive returns and as a group outperformed the major averages. Parker-Hannifin lead the way with a 22.6% return, which was the result of an excellent earnings report and the announcement of a 31.25% increase to the dividend.The Dividend Contenders Trash BinFor this article, I will take a dive into the dumpster bin of the Dividend Contenders, which is a list assembled by David Fish of the companies trading on U.S. exchanges that have maintained 10-24 year streaks of annual dividend increases. As mentioned above, the cutoff for inclusion on the Champions List was a share price trading within 5% of the 52-week low. With the surge in equity prices since then, only 12 of the 232 Dividend Contenders are currently trading at those levels, so for this article I will look at all companies trading within 10% of their 52-week... Read more