Time for another ‘Article of Interest’ post. This is now the 4th post in this series, with the last one appearing one month ago. This time I list an article from MarketWatch, deviating from the string of articles from Kiplinger.
To recap the intent of this… every now and then, when perusing investing or personal finance articles across the Internet, I come across what I call an ‘Article of Interest’, or ‘A of I’ for short.
I decided it might be helpful to share a link to the article in case some of my visitors would find it of interest as well.
In most cases, the articles will focus on dividend-paying stocks or dividend growth investing (DGI). However, other finance-related topics might be highlighted, too.
Now that we are up-to-speed, let’s see what this A of I is about…
Link Overview
Today’s link takes you to an article that lists what the author says are Wall Street’s top dividend stock picks for 2020.
With the new year fast approaching, who doesn’t want to see a list of stocks that might be winners in 2020?
These “top” picks are stocks from S&P 1500 Composite Index, which includes the S&P 500 Index (SPX), the S&P 400 Mid Cap Index (MID), and the S&P Small Cap 600 Index (SML).
It seems the selection criteria were stocks with dividend yields of at least 2.50%, as well as at least 75% “buy” or equivalent ratings among five or more analysts. A total of 28 stocks made the list.
Supposedly, if you are interested in any of the listed stocks, “you’re in it for the dividend yield, and hopefully a rising share price over the long term”. Check it out…
Looking over the list, I only recognized about half of the stocks. I expected to recognize more.
After a little more investigation, it appears one thing uncommon to these stocks is a long history of dividend growth. In fact, only one company in the list has at least 10 years of consecutive dividend increases, and that’s Blackrock (BLK). Ironically, this is the only stock in the list that I happen to own.
I would think there would be quite a few Dividend Champions and Contenders that would sport a yield north of 2.5% that were covered by a fair number of analysts and had at least 3/4 of their analyst recommendations be “Buy”, but apparently that’s not the case. Hmmm….
As a whole, I can’t say these stocks look like top dividend stock picks for me, but maybe there’s a diamond in there somewhere.
How many of these dividend stocks picks for 2020 are already present in your portfolio? Do you have more than the one I had? Which ones?
Also, what do you make of the list? Are you surprised by the collection of stocks that made the list? Did you find any stocks worthy of further investigation?
I hope you find the article useful and/or enjoyable. As always, please share your thoughts once you’ve had a chance to read the material.
See you next time…