Three Reasons to Favor Dividend Paying Stocks
For more than 80 years, stocks have been paying dividends that have provided an important boost to the overall return of stocks. Dividends often get downplayed but they historically have been very significant. Over the last 82 years of history in the stock market, an average of 35% of monthly returns from stocks have come from dividends, a number much higher than most would guess. Twice there have been entire decades where the dividends paid to shareholders of stocks made up more than 50% of the average monthly return.
Companies have a choice about how much of a dividend they want to pay and many companies have cut their dividends during the recession. It takes steady earnings to pay dividends at all and a stable dividend is a sign of a stable company to invest in.

