If you are concerned that current valuations may cast a shadow over the future returns of equity-income strategies, you're not alone. There's no telling how long dividend stocks' recent run of outperformance will continue.
But there are plenty of reasons to think that investing in steady dividend-paying stocks, particularly high-quality stocks that are healthy enough to not only sustain but possibly even increase their dividend, won't go out of style completely.
Investors still have need for income, and although interest rates are likely to rise, they are still very low by historical standards and are not expected to shoot up dramatically anytime soon.
To get a better sense of how over- or undervalued dividend-paying stocks are today, we run a screen with selection of dividend yield, P/E and growth and filtered those stocks with attractive ratios in most of the areas.
Here are the top results from our screen...