Morningstar's Favorite Dividend ETFs

With bond coupon rates at historic lows, investment categories that offer alternative sources of yield have been among the most popular over the past couple of years. We see this trend continuing into 2012 and feel that investors should take comfort in the academic evidence supporting dividend investing and the total return approach.

Within stocks, we prefer large-cap and low-risk stocks to smaller-cap or pricier stocks. Economic growth will likely remain subpar, so we want to avoid high beta stocks and those pricing in an expectation for rapid growth. But even with slow growth, dividend-paying stocks should be able to maintain their payouts. With that investment thesis in mind, here are some of the funds that we recommend as well as a few high-yielding funds we might avoid: Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index ETF (VYM), WisdomTree DEFA (DWM), PowerShares FTSE RAFI US 1000 (PRF), Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG) and iShares High Dividend Equity (HDV).

Source: Seeking Alpha

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