The S&P
500 had total returns of 7.2% a year over the last 25 years. At this rate, the
S&P 500 doubled investor wealth every 10 years.
Investors
often think of dividend stocks as stodgy slow growers that offer current income
but little in the way of capital appreciation. This is often not the case.
In fact, if
you look at the top 15 dividend stocks of the past 25 years, you'll see that even
the worst of them way outperforms the market.
To find the
15 best-performing dividend stocks of the last 25 years, we reviewed the
dividend history of all dividend-paying stocks in the S&P 500. Businesses
that paid dividends from 1990 through 2015 without missing more than one year
were included as dividend stocks.
Here are
the 15 best stocks from the large index with the highest total return of the
past 25 years.
