There are a million and one ways to make a buck on Wall Street, but some methods are more reliable than others. If you’re an investor looking for a way to beef up your passive income stream or you simply want big gains, buying dividend-paying stocks and holding them is a relatively easy way to make it happen.
Dividend-payers have to manage their cash more carefully than non-dividend-payers, which leads to measurable benefits for investors. During the 50 years from 1973 through 2023, stocks in the benchmark S&P 500 index that paid dividends rose by 9.17% annually on average. Annual returns from non-dividend-payers in the same index are less than half at just 4.27% on average, according to Ned Davis Research and Hartford Funds.
At the moment, shares of these companies offer dividend yields of 5% or better. Here’s why investors can expect them to outperform in the decade ahead.
This post originally appeared at The Motley Fool.