The Best High-Yield Dividend Stocks of 2015

Until the Federal Reserve incrementally raised them in December, for most of 2015 interest rates continued to motor along at historic lows. As a result, even the most generous dividend-paying stocks returned money well short of double-digit percentage rates. So our definition of "high-yield" for the year has to be stretched a bit. For our purposes here, we'll say that it's a rate that's at least double the average dividend yield of stocks on the S&P 500, which throughout the year hovered at around the 2% level. Using that criterion, I've picked out three companies that went above and beyond in 2015 to put money back in the pockets of their shareholders. The envelope, please...

Realty Income (NYSE:O) - This venerable real estate investment trust places such an emphasis on its monthly payout, it not only calls itself "the monthly dividend company," it's gone so far as to trademark the slogan. That level of commitment is a big reason Realty Income regularly makes investor lists of top dividend-paying stocks. HCP (NYSE:HCP) - Elsewhere in the REIT sector -- a fine source of high-yield dividends, given that REITs have to pay out the bulk of their earnings as such -- is this niche player. HCP has one of the better niches, in fact, as it specializes in healthcare facilities.

Source: Motley Fool

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