Dividend Stocks That Broke Out with the S&P 500 and NASDAQ This Week

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It was a good week for the stock market.

After the S&P 500 index closed at a new high on Monday, the NASDAQ joined it in new record high territory.  So, I went looking for dividend stocks that joined the two major indices in new high territory using the screener function on finviz.com.

I screened for stocks using the following criteria:

  • Industry: Stocks Only (ex-Funds)
  • Dividend Yield: Over 2%
  • Payout Ratio: Under 100% (to make sure that the dividend was reasonably stable and wasn’t likely to be cut)
  • 52-Week High/Low: New High
  • Average Volume: Over 200K
  • Relative Volume: Between 1.5 and 20 (this represents the multiple of the stock’s average volume for that day’s trading.  This narrows the list down to stocks that reached a new high on larger than average volume)

(Note: You must be a paid subscriber to select a range of relative volumes.  However, if you are a registered user of Finviz.com – which is free – you can select from a list of predefined options from the drop down menu.)

(Also note that the screening criteria above will only show companies that traded at new 52-week highs on Friday, not earlier in the week.)

With these filters in place, my list was narrowed down to the following 5 stocks:

Arbor Realty Trust (Ticker Symbol: ABR): ABR is a New York State-based REIT.  It’s primary business is making loans to owners of commercial and multi-family properties.   The company paid dividends from 2004 through 2008, when they suspended them.  They resumed dividend payments in 2012 and have grown them year-over-year since then.  Based on current prices (as of November 1, 2019) the REIT sports a dividend yield of 8.2% and a Price/Earnings Ratio of 10.1.

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY): The largest company among the five by far, the drug maker has a market capitalization of more than $90 billion.  The company has paid quarterly dividends since 1970, and has grown them annually since 2009.  Bristol-Myers currently yields 2.9% and is expected to grow earnings at 6% over the next five years.

Newmark Group (NMRK): Newmark Group is a property manager for commercial real estate companies.  The company was spun-off from brokerage company BGC Partners (BGCP) in mid-2018 and has paid dividends quarterly since then.  The company yields 3.5% and has a payout ratio of around 50%.

Seagate Technology (STX): After announcing quarterly earnings on Friday morning, the disk drive manufacturer gapped down in the morning and was then bought up over the course of the day, touching a new high before settling back slightly below its 52-week high.  The company has paid dividends since 2003, except for a 27 month gap in from early 2009 to mid-2011.  Seagate is the only company on the list that isn’t based in the United States (it’s headquartered in Ireland); it currently yields 4.4%.

The Western Union Company (WU): Although widely known for transferring monies across the world, Western Union is, in reality, a credit services company.  The company has paid dividends annually since 2006 and quarterly since 2010.  It has grown them every year since then.  The stock popped more than 5% on Friday to new highs and currently yields 3.0%.

I hope this gives you a few decent income stocks to look at.  As always, do your own research before investing in any of these companies.  A good place to start is at finviz.com, where you can see the numbers that I cited above along with lots of other data and news stories about these companies.  You can also use the screener tool yourself to adjust the parameters above or to build your own stock screen.