With thousands of publicly traded companies and exchange-traded funds to choose from, Wall Street offers investors a seemingly endless array of strategies to grow their wealth. But when the numbers are crunched, it's tough to consistently beat the annualized return of high-quality dividend stocks over the long run.

Roughly 10 years ago, the wealth management segment of America's largest money-center bank by assets, JPMorgan Chase, released a report that examined the performance of companies initiating and growing their payout over 40 years (1972-2012) to public companies not paying a dividend over the same span. The difference in annualized returns was night and day.

Whereas the income stocks delivered a meaty annualized return of 9.5% over four decades, the non-payers produced a measly annualized return of just 1.6%.

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Source Fool.com