How to Find the Best Dividend Stocks

If you're ignoring dividend-paying stocks in your investing, you're doing your portfolio a big disservice. Consider, for example, a 2013 J.P. Morgan Asset Management report that looked at companies that regularly made (and increased) dividend payouts and companies that paid no dividends between 1972 and 2012 -- and found quite a difference: The average annual gain for the payers-and-increasers was 9.6%, while it was just 1.6% for non-payers.

Such outperformance has held true in other studies and reports, too, to varying degrees. Not all dividends are equally attractive, of course, so here's a look at three things you can do to better zero in on the best dividends.

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Source Fool.com