History speaks volumes on Wall Street. It shows us that all significant downturns in the major U.S. stock indexes are eventually cleared away by bull market rallies. Additionally, it provides clear-cut evidence that dividend stocks offer a path to outperformance.

Back in 2013, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, a division of money-center bank JPMorgan Chase, published a report that compared the annualized returns of companies that initiated and grew their payouts between 1972 and 2012 to stocks that didn't offer a dividend over the same 40-year period. The dividend stocks produced a hearty 9.5% annualized return over four decades, while the non-payers trudged their way to an annualized return of just 1.6%.

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Source Fool.com