evilgenius wrote:A few weeks ago I bought HEP at about $12. It's gained about $3 since. I think they can get back to hovering around $24. The beautiful thing about HEP is that their dividend is built for that higher price. It is absurdly high right now because of the current low price range. If this period were not temporary by definition, I think I could expect a dividend cut. This isn't the only stock like this, I'm sure. It just stood out for me because I watch it. I wonder if anybody else, like with the CVX dividend example, has seen this same situation develop with stocks they watch?
I have no good examples, as I've mostly noticed dividend cuts with bad business results, which is common in deep recessions (or worse).
If libraries are open or if you don't mind paying up for data (maybe $800ish a year, re their ads, as I recall), "The Value Line Investment Survey" which publishes solid, well organized fundamental data on thousands of large cap stocks in many industries, has a summary section each week that shows various interesting ranks of the stocks it covers, sorted various ways. One of those stock screens/ranks is by dividend yield. In past recessions when I was less lazy and less into AVOIDING public places, I used to find interesting ideas to research looking at that ranking. Last I checked, they had both a print and online version.
For one example, I got into the MLP space, upon seeing how both the dividends AND the business of quality midstream energy MLP's (see AMLP ETF for a sampling of such companies) held up well during the great recession, but such MLP's generally got killed because of the panic over low oil prices.
This time the dividends came some down too, partly due to tax / policy changes, but AMLP got killed spectacularly over, again, apparently over panic in the energy business and economy.
It's up quite a bit now compared to the bottom, though Yahoo shows the dividend still at nearly 12%. So IF the economy recovers in a year or two and things return to more or less normal, that COULD work out well by early doubling and raking in a nice dividend (which might grow a bit too) while that occurs.
Or not of course, but the point is I would expect an ETP like that to show up clearly in the dividend screen of Value Line (which is what I recall them calling the sort by high yield).
Though I do NOT think Value Line's recommendations outperform the market despite their claims, I DO think that looking at quality fundamental data and long term relative stock prices vs. business conditions in a professional, unemotional format, is useful for people who want to pick stocks. Disclosure -- I am a fundamental investor -- others like to follow chart patterns. As I recall, they had other useful screens like low PE stocks, unpopular stocks (I forget the particular methodology), etc.
YMMV, just pointing this out, IN NO WAY am making an investment recommendation here -- just suggesting a practical high dividend screen, since you mentioned looking for high dividend stocks. I used to like to go quarterly (Value Line cycles through all the stocks they cover every 13 weeks) to the library and see the updates, since it was free and didn't take too much time. (While my dad was alive, he took Value Line and used to give me his quarter-old issues instead of throw them away, which is how I stumbled onto that service).
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.