In the second years of the last two bull markets, dividend-payers — as measured by the Standard & Poor's 500 Dividend Aristocrats index — have beaten the overall S.& P. 500 by an average of nearly 6 percentage points.
That these stalwarts are cutting dividends is especially troubling because, as noted by Forbes.com Investor Team member Anant Sundaram, roughly 50 of America's largest companies pay the vast majority of the markets dividends.
In the late bull market, dividend payments provided one of the seemingly strongest arguments for the bulls.
Market: Dividends | "In the past six months, nearly half of all companies that sold shares through an I.P.O., or 26 in total, have paid a dividend," Fortune writes.
Last year, banking dividends accounted for more than 30percentnt of the total market dividends; this year, only two institutions are expected to be able to make a cash payment - HSBC and Standard Chartered.
So, while Flash's stock as a local legend never fell off, it's been a minute since it paid such high market dividends.
Since the 2008 crisis, with returns on government bonds negative, and stock market dividends depressed, pension funds have been pouring money into the hedge fund sector.
McMahon did not deny that choosing Rose as the wrestling organization's first celebrity inductee offered marketing dividends as a timely way to capitalize on the burst of publicity for Rose's recent book, "My Prison Without Bars".
In a flat or falling stock market, dividend-paying stocks usually have better total returns; in addition to the income they generate, high-yielding stocks tend to have better price appreciation, or at least shallower declines.
