11 High Yield Stocks to Consider Now

Approximately once per month I run a high-yield momentum screen and post the results. Last month's list is here. Returns for the last month were flat, returning -.02% including dividends (-.44% before dividends) versus 1.54% for SPY and -.04% for SPY, the S&P Dividend ETF. The top performing stock from last month's list was Verizon (VZ) returning 4.81% excluding its $.488 dividend. The strategy did relatively well in 2010 and is one I continue to track because of its promise. In recent months I have also done a variation of this strategy with the Dividend Champions list in which I only search stocks that have had a history of raising dividends for 25+ years. The screen looks for high yielding high momentum stocks. I screen the S&P 500 for stocks yielding greater than 4% and then rank them by 6 month returns. There were 53 results (versus 54 last month) and per a previous article (see below for explanation), the highest momentum, high yield stocks have historically been the best performing so I have listed the top 20% based on 6 month returns, or 11 stocks.... Read more