The Highest Yielding S&P 500 Stocks

If you are on the hunt for yield, the top 10 highest yielding S&P 500 stocks is a tempting place to look for new ideas. Compared to the less than 2.5% yield offered by investing in an S&P 500 index fund, the average yield of the highest 10 dividend-paying S&P 500 stocks is over 8.3%.

The list below includes the 10 highest yielding S&P 500 stocks along with their indicated dividend yield. Click the company name for more information on each stock.

Highest Yielding S&P 500 Stocks

There are some compelling indicated yields on the list, but indicated is the operative word. It is often the case that stocks with the highest indicated dividend yields are also the most likely to cut their dividends.

For example, 4 of the 10 highest yielding S&P 500 stocks at year-end 2016 have since decreased or eliminated their dividends. The average performance of that group of stocks over the following three years was -34%.

The Best Dividend Stocks

Selecting the best dividend stocks isn’t as simple as finding the highest yielding companies. The chart below compares the long-term performance of five different dividend investing strategies.

The first strategy represented by the column to the far right on the chart ranks all U.S. stocks by dividend yield and invests in the highest yielding 10% of stocks. All stocks are re-ranked and the portfolio is reformed annually. The second strategy, represented by the second column in from the right, buys companies in the second 10% or second decile as ranked by yield. The other three portfolios follow suit.

The Best Performing Dividend Investment Strategy

As the dividend strategy chart illustrates, investing in the highest yielding stocks doesn’t deliver the best returns. The best performing dividend investing strategy out of the five shown here is the portfolio that invests in dividend-paying stocks in the third decile ranked by yield.

The actionable investment advice is to look beyond stocks with the juiciest yields. Proper dividend investing should weigh a range of factors. Yield is certainly one consideration, but dividend safety and dividend growth are others that may be even more important.

Young Research’s Retirement Compounders® portfolio is a dividend-based strategy that takes into account dividend yield, dividend growth, dividend consistency, and dividend safety, among other factors. To learn more about a managed solution for the Retirement Compounders® visit younginvestments.com.

The 10 Highest Yielding S&P 500 Stocks

Oneok (OKE) • 13.10% • Dividend Safety: Low

ONEOK, Inc. (NYSE: OKE) is a leading midstream service provider and owner of one of the nation’s premier natural gas liquids (NGL) systems, connecting NGL supply in the Rocky Mountain, Mid-Continent and Permian regions with key market centers and an extensive network of natural gas gathering, processing, storage and transportation assets.

CenturyLink (CTL) • 10.78% • Dividend Safety: Low

CenturyLink is an integrated communications company that provides communications services to residential and business customers. The communications company owns a vast fiber optics network that spans the globe.

ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM) • 10.49% • Dividend Safety: Moderate

ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest publicly traded energy providers and chemical manufacturers, develops and applies next-generation technologies to help safely and responsibly meet the world’s growing needs for energy and high-quality chemical products.

Valero Energy (VLO) • 9.92% • Dividend Safety: Moderate

Valero Energy Corporation, through its subsidiaries (collectively, “Valero”), is an international manufacturer and marketer of transportation fuels and petrochemical products. Valero is a Fortune 50 company based in San Antonio, Texas, and it operates 15 petroleum refineries with a combined throughput capacity of approximately 3.2 million barrels per day and 14 ethanol plants with a combined production capacity of approximately 1.73 billion gallons per year. The petroleum refineries are located in the United States (U.S.), Canada and the United Kingdom (U.K.), and the ethanol plants are located in the Mid-Continent region of the U.S. Valero also is a joint venture partner in Diamond Green Diesel, which operates a renewable diesel plant in Norco, Louisiana. Diamond Green Diesel is North America’s largest biomass-based diesel plant. Valero sells its products in the wholesale rack or bulk markets in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland and Latin America. Approximately 7,000 outlets carry Valero’s brand names.

Altria (MO) • 9.22% • Dividend Safety: Low

Altria’s wholly-owned subsidiaries include Philip Morris USA Inc. (PM USA), U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company LLC (USSTC), John Middleton Co. (Middleton), Sherman Group Holdings, LLC and its subsidiaries (Nat Sherman), Ste. Michelle Wine Estates Ltd. (Ste. Michelle) and Philip Morris Capital Corporation (PMCC). Altria owns an 80% interest in Helix Innovations LLC (Helix). Altria holds equity investments in Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (ABI), JUUL Labs, Inc. (JUUL) and Cronos Group Inc. (Cronos).

Iron Mountain (IRM) • 9.00% • Dividend Safety: Low

Iron Mountain Incorporated, founded in 1951, is the global leader for storage and information management services. Trusted by more than 225,000 organizations around the world, and with a real estate network of more than 90 million square feet across nearly 1,450 facilities in approximately 50 countries, Iron Mountain stores and protects billions of valued assets, including critical business information, highly sensitive data, and cultural and historical artifacts. Providing solutions that include secure records storage, information management, digital transformation,
secure destruction, as well as data centers, cloud services and art storage and logistics, Iron Mountain helps customers lower cost and risk, comply with regulations, recover from disaster, and enable a more digital way of working.

Kinder Morgan Inc. (KMI) • 8.82% • Dividend Safety: Moderate

Kinder Morgan, Inc. (NYSE: KMI) is one of the largest energy infrastructure companies in North America. Our mission is to provide energy transportation and storage services in a safe, efficient and environmentally responsible manner for the benefit of people, communities and businesses. Our vision is delivering energy to improve lives and create a better world. We own an interest in or operate approximately 83,000 miles of pipelines and 147 terminals. Our pipelines transport natural gas, refined petroleum products, crude oil, condensate, CO₂ and other products, and our terminals store and handle various commodities including gasoline, diesel fuel chemicals, ethanol, metals and petroleum coke.

Williams Cos. (WMB) • 8.37% • Dividend Safety: Moderate

The Williams Companies, Inc., is an energy company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Its core business is natural gas processing and transportation, with additional petroleum and electricity generation assets.

Simon Property (SPG) • 8.19% • Dividend Safety: Low

Simon is a real estate investment trust engaged in the ownership of premier shopping, dining, entertainment and mixed-use destinations and an S&P 100 company (Simon Property Group, NYSE: SPG). Our properties across North America, Europe and Asia provide community gathering places for millions of people every day and generate billions in annual sales.

SL Green Realty (SLG) • 7.46% • Dividend Safety: Low

SL Green Realty Corp., an S&P 500 company and Manhattan’s largest office landlord, is a fully integrated real estate investment trust, or REIT, that is focused primarily on acquiring, managing and maximizing value of Manhattan commercial properties. As of September 30, 2020, SL Green held interests in 93 buildings totaling 40.6 million square feet. This included ownership interests in 29.2 million square feet of Manhattan buildings and 10.3 million square feet securing debt and preferred equity investments.