Should You Scoop Up These 10 Highest-Yielding Dividend Stocks of 2020?
Income investors generally want to maximize their dividend yield, but unfortunately, a winning investment strategy is not as simple as running a screener and buying shares of the stocks with the highest yields at a given moment. A dividend yield might reach high levels because the market is pricing the stock with the assumption that the dividend per share will decline in the future.
Investors analyzing high-yield stocks should assess the likelihood that the current dividend is sustainable using the dividend payout ratio, as well as several financial health ratios. Financial health metrics such as the interest coverage ratio, current ratio, and debt-to-equity ratio indicate a company's ability to sustain operations and distributions to shareholders through temporary disruptions such as recessions, pandemics, and energy crises. If dividends are too high relative to profits, and a company doesn't have enough liquid assets to keep paying the current dividend for several quarters, it's likely that the yield will fall back to earth.
With that in mind, here are 10 of the highest-yielding dividend stocks on U.S. exchanges in 2020 (based on Dec. 21 stock prices).
Source Fool.com
