These Are The 20 Best Performing Dividend Stocks Of The Year 2015 - Can They Repeat Their Success in 2016?

When investing in dividend stocks, the primary goal isn't necessarily to make a boatload of money right away. 

Rather, most of us invest in dividend stocks for a stable, growing income stream that will build wealth over time. Still, dividend stocks do experience some big moves from time to time.

Today I like to give you an overview of the best performing dividend stocks of the year. The Dow Jones is negative year-to-date. It was a really hard year. Only seven stocks gained more than 100%. Around 40 companies had a performance over 50%.

You will see that high yields are not performance drivers.

Attached you can find the 20 best performing dividend paying stocks of the year. I've only selected those companies with a market cap over 300 million. The performance of the 20 top stocks starts at 60.19% and ends at 290.47%.

These were the best large cap dividend stock investments of the year 2015...

40 Cheapest Dividend Growth Stocks By P/E And PEG

Value investors have a strong focus on stocks with a low valuation compared to its expected earnings. A very popular tool for investors to identify an undervaluation is the P/E ratio.

The P/E ratio often looks cheap but they are cheap for a reason. Mostly a dying operating business is responsible for the low P/E. On the other side, a high P/E could show that we have to deal with a high-growth company.

This general problem could be solved with the PEG ratio. By definition, it describes the value compared to its growth or Price-Earnings-To-Growth Ratio.

Definitions

The P/E ratio is simply: Price / Earnings
Essentially, this tells you how much an investor is willing to pay for each unit (year) of earnings. If a stock is trading at a P/E ratio of 30, it is said to be trading at 30x times its annual earnings.

In general, the lower the P/E ratio the better. A common threshold for many investors is a P/E of 20 or less. (For the record, at the time of this writing, the S&P 500 Index was trading at a P/E (using F1 Estimates) of 15.33.)

A PEG ratio is the: P/E Ratio divided by the Growth Rate

Conventional wisdom says a value of 1 or less is considered good (at par or undervalued to its growth rate), while a value of greater than 1, in general, is not as good (overvalued to its growth rate).
Many believe the PEG ratio tells a more complete story than just the P/E ratio. (The S&P at the time of this writing had a PEG ratio of 1.93.)

Comparison

Let's take a look at both of these in action.
For example: a company with a P/E Ratio of 25 and a Growth Rate of 20% would have a PEG ratio of 1.25 (25 / 20= 1.25).

While a company with a P/E Ratio of 40 and a Growth Rate of 50% would have a PEG Ratio of 0.80 (40 / 50= 0.80).

Traditionally, investors would look at the stock with the lower P/E ratio and deem it a bargain (undervalued). But looking at it closer, you can see it doesn't have the growth rate to justify its P/E.

The stock with the P/E of 40, however, is actually the better bargain since its PEG ratio is lower (0.80) and is trading at a discount to its growth rate.

In other words, the lower the PEG ratio, the better the value. That's because the investor would be paying less for each unit of earnings growth.

So which one is better?

They both have their usefulness. I do like how the PEG positions the P/E ratio in relation to its growth rate to put everything into perspective.

Quite frankly, I use both, so I'm going to say it's a tie. Plus, you couldn't even create the PEG ratio without the P/E.


Attached you can find the 20 cheapest dividend growers by PEG and P/E. The results include only stocks with a constant dividend growth history of at least 10 years. They are classical Dividend Achievers.

Here are the results:

20 Potentially Undervalued Dividend Stocks

One of the most common pitfalls for investors is their tendency to chase returns in the market; that is to say, many investors are prone to being lured by “hot” names on Wall Street that are making big gains, as opposed to focusing on the “out of favor,” high-quality companies that may be due for a rebound. But it's risky to follow market gurus or to go with the trend.

Maybe a better approach could be buying, fundamentally-sound dividend stocks that seem to be underpriced at the moment. Make no mistake, like many feats in the investing world, this one is also easier said than done. 

As such, below we’ve tried to discover a few undervalued stocks that might be interesting for income investors. We've used a tool with data from CapitalIQ, a Standard&Poors Company. 

These stocks pay at least 2% dividend and are available at a discount to their share price.

The following criteria have been used to create this view:

- Modest dividend of at least 2%

- Potentially undervalued Discount > 10%)

- An acceptable financial position.

- No 'warning' companies

The forward P/E from most of the results are close to 10 or below.

These are the results:

20 Potentially Undervalued Dividend Stocks
(click to enlarge)

10 S&P 500 Stocks With A Big Gap Between Free Cash Flow Yield And Dividend Yield

One way to gauge a company’s ability to raise dividends, or at least not cut them, is to divide its free cash flow per share by the share price to come up with a free cash flow yield. And that can be compared with the dividend yield.

A company’s free cash flow is its remaining cash flow after capital expenditures. To present a useful list of dividend stocks with dividend yields that appear safe, we started with the S&P 500, and then removed stocks with negative returns of 15% or more this year.

After all, investors have little confidence in them. We then pared the list to companies that have paid dividends for at least five years, while removing any that have cut regular dividends at any time over the past five years, according to FactSet.

Here are the results...

7 Stocks With Reliable Dividends For Long-Term Retirement Investors

Dividend investing, or choosing stocks with a reliable cash payout, is a proven strategy. 

In the stock market, there are two paths to return on investment: capital appreciation and dividends.

Of the two paths, the only one with any reliability is the cash dividend.

Investors seeking a reliable rate of return can look to blue-chip dividend-paying stocks with confidence. The cash dividend is a company policy.

It must be voted on, declared and authorized by the board of directors, who arguably know the current condition of the company better than anyone else, as well as the prospects for the future. The cash dividend has a record date, an ex-date and a pay date.

Reliable dividends are more important for retirees, income growth investors who like to retire earlier and don't want to look each quarter at the results of the cyclic company while fearing a dividend cut.

Attached I've tried to compile a few dividend stock ideas, large caps with a solid dividend growth history, that may offer a big margin of safety for anxious investors.

Here are the results...