Flight to Quality

Since the S&P 500 topped out on May 8th, the index is down 6.77% (although it may seem like more).  We broke the index's members into deciles by dividend yields to see how stocks with higher payouts have performed.  We also measured the performance of the 113 S&P 500 stocks that pay no dividends.

Since May 8th, the stocks that offer no dividends are down 13.90% while the decile of stocks with the highest dividend yields is down just 1.87%.  Looking at the table below, the top 3 deciles by yields are down less than the index as a whole, while the rest are under performing.

Comments

[douglas mcintyre]

This is the kind of analysis that is very hard to get because people won't do the work to look back this far.

Excellent post.

[Asif Suria]

It is good to see that you restricted your universe to just the S&P 500 as this may not apply to the market as a whole. If you don't take REITs into account, the stocks with the highest dividend yields are usually the ones where something is wrong.