Has the stock correction mostly run its course? Or are we in the early stages of a bear market? Frankly, I have no idea. There’s really no way to reliably know ahead of time. Popular bear-market indicators like the “death cross” have a mixed record at best, and strategies that reliably avoid bear markets also unfortunately tend to miss the most profitable parts of bull markets too.
If your portfolio returns depend entirely on selling to a greater fool, then this is a perilous time to be in the market. I wouldn’t want to own a high flying momentum darling like Netflix (NFLX) or Amazon (AMZN) if I thought the market might roll over because expensive stocks often fall the hardest.
But if current income is a part of your investment process, then a little market volatility is nothing to worry about. A portfolio of cheap dividend stocks with high and growing payouts will to allow you to realize a decent cash return while waiting for the market regain its footing.
And if you reinvest your dividends, you automatically average in at lower prices.
Today, we’re going to take a look at 10 dividend stocks to hold for the remainder of 2015, come what may in the market. All pay solid dividends, and most are dividend-raising champions.
AAPL Dividend Yield: 1.8%
I’ll start with Carl Icahn’s darling, iPhone maker Apple (AAPL).
Apple has become something of a punching bag of late, with fears of a China slowdown casting a shadow over the company. There also is a growing sentiment that the company Steve Jobs built into a wellspring of innovation might have lost its mojo. The iPhone is now nearly a decade old, yet it remains Apple’s primary cash cow.
Guess what? I don’t care.
Even if Apple never invents a major new product again, the stock is still attractive at today’s prices. AAPL stock trades at a very modest forward P/E of 11.5. And if you strip out the roughly $35 per share in cash and investments, you get a forward P/E of 7.9. That is absurdly cheap.
Meanwhile, Apple has quickly evolved into a shareholder-friendly, dividend-raising machine. Apple’s current dividend yield is a modest 1.8%, but Apple has proven its mettle as a hiker. Since initiating its quarterly dividend in 2012 at 37.9 cents (adjusted for its split), AAPL has bumped it up by 37%. And if the stock price slides much further, you can bet that Icahn will be agitating for another large stock buyback.
MSFT Dividend Yield: 3.3%
Next up is Apple’s erstwhile rival from the PC era, Microsoft (MSFT).
Given the decline of the PC as a computing platform, Microsoft might seem like an odd choice. But under its savvy new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft is successfully transitioning itself beyond the Windows. Along with Google (GOOG) and Amazon, MSFT has become one of the “Big Three” in cloud computing and services.
And given Microsoft’s much longer history serving the enterprise market, my bet is that Microsoft’s cloud business eventually leaves Amazon’s and Google’s in the dust.
Microsoft is really a king among dividend stocks. It sports a dividend yield of 3.3%, making it one of the highest-yielding mainstream stocks in the S&P 500. And it’s also raising that dividend at a blistering rate, even while managing to lead the industry in capital spending. Over the past five years, Microsoft has raised its dividend at a 19% clip.
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