The Only High-Yield Dow Stock Making New Highs Is...

One of the highest-yielding dividend stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average continued its fall from grace this week when General Electric Company GE cut its dividend in half and issued disappointing guidance numbers for 2018. With GE out of the picture, The Coca-Cola Co KO may be the best option for Dow dividend investors.

GE's Woes

Investors are fleeing GE stock in droves, sending shares down another 13.9 percent so far this week. While GE may be the most extreme case, GE’s lackluster 2017 is a familiar sight for Dow dividend investors. In fact, among the nine Dow stocks that now yield 3 percent or better, only Coca-Cola is trading at or near all-time highs, despite the fact that the market is more than eight years into a historic bull run.

The S&P 500 is up more than 15 percent year-to-date, but not a single one of the top 10 dividend stocks in the Dow has been able to match that performance. Coca-Cola and Cisco Systems, Inc. CSCO are the only two high-yielders that have delivered double-digit returns year-to-date, but Cisco is still nowhere near its dot-com bubble peak back in 2000.

Popping Up

Coca-Cola just got upgraded to Buy at Wells Fargo, which raised its price target for the stock from $45 to $51. The stock has twice balked at the $47 level in September and October, but Benzinga PreMarket Prep co-host Dennis Dick said the stock’s positive momentum may now have shorts running scared.

“I don’t want to play games with it being short above $47,” Dick said. “As long as it stays below $47, the shorts will be in control.”

After a 1.3 percent gain on Tuesday, Coke is once again making all-time highs, an achievement no other high-yield Dow stock can claim at the moment.

Joel Elconin contributed to this story.

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