There are a lot of ways to grow your nest egg on Wall Street. Investing in dividend stocks over the long run just happens to be a strategy with an exceptionally high return rate.

In 2013, the wealth management segment of JPMorgan Chase, America's largest bank by assets, released the results of a study that compared the performance of companies that initiated and grew their payouts between 1972 and 2012 to that of public companies that didn't pay a dividend to their shareholders. Unsurprisingly, the dividend stocks absolutely stomped the non-payers in the return column.

Over the stretch of four decades, the dividend stocks produced an annualized return of 9.5%. You'll note this is well ahead of the long-term annualized return rate of all commodities, as well as housing and bonds. Meanwhile, companies without a dividend generated a measly annualized return of 1.6% over 40 years.

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Source Fool.com