Dividend Stocks Outperforming

The average stock in the S&P 500 is down 6.4% since October 28th when the S&P 500 made its most recent closing high.  We broke the index into deciles (10 groups of 50 stocks each) based on dividend yield and then calculated the average performance of stocks in each decile since October 28th to see how income-paying stocks have performed during the current market pullback.  As shown below, the two deciles with the highest yielding stocks have averaged declines of 4.7% and 4.3% respectively, while the three bottom deciles based on dividend yields are significantly underperforming.  During times of market turmoil, high dividend payers typically outperform, and that has certainly been the case during the current pullback. 

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