It's not easy buying when everyone else is selling, but Wall Street wisdom suggests that's exactly what long-term investors should be doing. My take on that is to focus on long-term dividend payers with historically high yields in the hope that this combination will lead me to cheap but reliable dividend stocks.

So I recently added money to Hormel and Medtronic (NYSE: MDT), which both fit my investing mold. But Medtronic is probably the better-positioned company right now. Here's why I like it.

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool dividend investor, so we have to start with the dividend -- not the yield, the dividend streak. Medtronic has increased its dividend annually for 45 consecutive years. To be fair, it operates in the healthcare industry, making and selling medical devices, so it has a very reliable underpinning that doesn't tend to experience large cyclical swings. But that doesn't change the fact that the dividend record is pretty impressive and hints at a company that truly places a high value on rewarding investors well for sticking around.

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Source Fool.com