Wall Street has helped investors grow their wealth for more than a century. While there's no perfect investment strategy, one that stands out as having a phenomenal track record of success is buying dividend stocks.

Last year, Hartford Funds released a lengthy report ("The Power of Dividends: Past, Present, and Future") that examined, among other things, the performance of income stocks to non-payers over the past half-century. Including data from Ned Davis Research, the researchers at Hartford Funds note that dividend payers have delivered an annualized return of 9.18% between 1973 and 2022. Meanwhile, non-payers have clawed their way to a less-impressive 3.95% annualized return spanning five decades.

What Hartford Funds' dividend report shows is that it's not a question of if dividend stocks are a smart buy for patient investors; it's a matter of which dividend stocks offer the best prospects.

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Source Fool.com