S&P 500: 13 S&P 500 Dividend Stocks Pay 50% More Than 10-Year Treasuries

There’s nothing like a plunge in yields to 4.1% to cool the mad dash to buy 10-year Treasuries. Now you can buy S&P 500 stocks that yield much more.

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Today you’ll find 13 S&P 500 stocks, including Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD), Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) and Altria Group (MO) yielding 6.2% or more, says an Investor’s Business Daily analysis of data from S&P Global Market Intelligence and MarketSmith. That’s at least 50% higher than the 4.1% you’d get with a current yield on the 10-year Treasury.

Seeing so many stocks yielding more than Treasuries is a wake-up call for investors. “A market that was obsessively focused on the path of the 10-year Treasury yield, and rightly so as it quickly breached 5% on Oct. 19, has also embraced the faster than expected drop lower for yields,” said Quincy Krosby, Chief Global Strategist for LPL Financial.

S&P 500 Dividends Challenge Treasuries Again

Almost overnight, S&P 500 dividends offer real competition to Treasuries. And there’s no shortage of big yields.

Part of the new math is due to plunging 10-year Treasury yields. At 4.1%, Treasury yields are nearly 20% lower than they were just weeks ago. Meanwhile, yields on many dividend paying stocks are soaring as value stocks struggle. That’s pushing yields higher on select stocks — and fast. There are now 79 stocks in the S&P 500 that yield as much or more than 10-year Treasuries.

The average yield of the 400 S&P 500 stocks that pay a dividend is 2.64%. And you can find stocks yielding much more than that.

Top S&P 500 Yielders: Pioneer Natural

You’ll find many S&P 500 stocks yielding more than 6% if you look for them.

If all you care about is a giant yield, Irving, Texas-based Pioneer Natural is the stock to beat. It’s yielding an impressive 12.2% despite the stock falling just 2.6% this year. Just know that the dividend likely won’t stick around forever. Rival Exxon Mobil (XOM) is looking to buy Pioneer for roughly $65 billion. Exxon Mobil stock yields just 3.8% — a fraction of what Pioneer does.

Pioneer is the only S&P 500 stock paying a double-digit percentage as a dividend. But approaching that level at a 9.4% yield is ailing drugstore Walgreens Boots Alliance. Mostly due to a 43% plunge in the stock price, the company now yields 9.4%. That’s certainly an outlier. S&P 500 industry peer CVS Health (CVS), in contrast, yields just 3.4%. And the company’s growth prospects don’t inspire confidence. Walgreens Boots’ adjusted profit per share is seen falling more than 16% this fiscal year.

And that’s unfortunately the trade-off. All 13 of the S&P 500 stocks yielding more than 6.2% are down this year. You have to look hard to find high dividends from S&P 500 stocks up this year. That stings all the more given that the S&P 500 rocketed roughly 20% in 2023 so far.

But if what you want is a high dividend yield, you’ve got plenty of stocks to choose from now.

Highest Yielding S&P 500 Stocks

Sources: S&P Global Market Intelligence, IBD