3 Solid Dividend Stocks With Buy Rating And Yields Over 3%

It's been a great time to be invested in the stock market recently. The S&P 500 is up 22% during the past 12 months and more than 83% in the past five years. 

Even more, with dividends from the S&P 500 automatically reinvested during the past five years, the market index is up more than 100% during this period. 

 But in a market like this, it's getting increasingly difficult to find solid dividend stocks, particularly dividend stocks with dividend yields over 3%. But there are still some hanging around. Here are a few stocks...

Gold Comes Back: Here Are The 15 Best Dividend Ideas From The Industry

Dividend stocks – that term says a lot. You buy a stock and on a recurring basis it pays you a cash dividend....And over time, thanks to those cash distributions and capital appreciation fueled by shareholder loyalty, the stock price rises. 

That’s a great way to build wealth. Another way is to buy gold. Gold is a true hard value and should hedge your cash against inflation.

In the past, it worked really well until gold prices began to crash. In recent days we see a small turnaround of gold prices. The leading big reserve banks still pumping tons of money into the market and a fear of recession is increasing.

However, I'm not a gold investor and don't have any gold stocks but for sentiment or momentum trader, it could be a great trading idea to bet on rising gold prices with gold dividend stocks.

Attached I've compiled all 15 gold stocks that pay a dividend. If you have any comments, please share your thoughts at the box below. Thank you for reading and contributing.

12 Top Yielding Stocks With Potential To Double Dividends

Dividend stocks can be the foundation of a great retirement portfolio. Not only do the payments put money in your pocket, which can help hedge against any dips in the stock market, they're usually a sign of a financially sound company.

Dividends also give investors a painless opportunity to reinvest in a stock, thus compounding gains over time. However, not all income stocks live up to their full potential.

Using the payout ratio -- i.e., the percentage of profits a company returns to its shareholders as dividends -- we can get a good bead on whether a company has room to increase its dividend. Ideally, we like to see healthy payout ratios between 50% and 75%.

I run a screen to find some good stock ideas that could offer upside in terms of dividend payments.

My criteria were low payout (under 50%), low debt (under 0.5), solid growth (over 5% for the next five years) and finally a dividend yield over 3 percent. 12 stocks keep on the screen. Each has a market cap over 2 billion.

Here are 12 income stocks with payout ratios currently below 50% that could potentially double their dividends in the future easily....

20 Best Performing Dividend Stocks Year-To-Date 2016

The start in the year was not as perfect as we have expected. At the end of last year, we saw a small bounce back to all-time highs but during the first month of the year 2016 we saw a small disaster. 

The Dow Jones is down 7.29% and the S&P 500 6.88% for the first 4 weeks of the year. Despite the bad start into the year, a dozen of stocks gained more than 10 percent. 

If this is a small signal for the rest of the year or a simple different reaction, we will see it over the next months.

Today I like to show you the 20 best performing dividend stocks since the start of the year 2016. They gained from 11.23% to 50.57% in the first 30 days of the year 2016.

Here are the best dividend stocks since the start of the year 2016...