10 Dividend Growth Stocks For March 2018

David Fish maintains a list of dividend growth stocks with at least five consecutive years of paying higher dividends. Colloquially called the CCC list, it contains more than 800 dividend growth stocks trading on U.S. exchanges. The CCC list and the accompanying spreadsheet is a wonderful source for dividend growth investors and I've been using it for years.
In my monthly 10 Dividend Growth Stocks series, I identify 10 CCC stocks worthy of further research. To create the list, I trim the CCC list using various screens. I rank the remaining stocks and assign a 7-star rating to each stock. Stocks rated 5 stars or better are worthy of further analysis.
Trimming the CCC List The latest CCC list (dated 2/28/18) contains 870 stocks.
Earlier this month, one of the authors I follow on Seeking Alpha, David Van Knapp, wrote an excellent article in which he identified the highest quality dividend growth stocks. Using a simple scoring system, he employed rankings and quality scores from independent data providers to grade stocks in the CCC list.
So far, the article has generated well over 600 comments! One of the comments, in particular, caught my eye. Scootrd referenced a paper that identifies the top 50 "wealth-creating stocks" of all time:

Here is a full citation of the paper:
Bessembinder, Hendrik, Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills? (November 21, 2017).Journal of Financial Economics (JFE), Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: Do Stocks Outperform... Read more