10 High Yield, High Momentum Stocks

Once per month I run a high-yield dividend stock momentum screen and use the results to manage a hypothetical stock portfolio on Scott's Investments. The strategy did relatively well in 2010 and is one I continue to track because of its promise. In recent months I have also done a variation of this strategy with the Dividend Champions list in which I only search stocks that have had a history of raising dividends for 25-plus years.

The screen looks for high yielding high momentum stocks and last month's list is here. I screen the S&P 500 for stocks yielding greater than 4% and then rank them by six-month returns. There were 6 results on July 10th (as opposed to 47 last month) and per a previous article (see below for explanation), the highest momentum, high yield stocks have historically been the best performing so I have listed the top 10 stocks below.

The article in reference was a study done by Charles Schwab which examined the 1,500 largest stocks by market capitalization from 1990-2009 and divided yielding stocks into four quadrants. It ranked the highest yielding stocks by six month price momentum, divided them into five segments, and found that highest yield stocks with the highest six month price momentum outperformed a) all other momentum segments (in other words, those high yield stocks with lower price momentum) and b) the annual return of the other yield quadrants.

As I have previously mentioned, the screen is more of a trading strategy and less of an income strategy, although the dividends do play an essential component in the overall returns. Thus, turnover could be high and the strategy is not for everyone but I have added a modification to the strategy to minimize turnover (see below).

For Monday, July 11th, the strategy is selling Pfizer (PFE) and Spectra Energy (SE) and using the proceeds to purchase Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) and Health Care REIT Inc. (HCN).