A variety of companies track investment data and occasionally they produce reports on what their systems can do. If you do not have the abilities, your broker does and it is possible to access the data. One of the companies which provides information is Thomson Reuters and Khaled Eniba produced the following charts in mid September.

He and his group looked at large cap companies providing a sustainable and consistent income stream with the potential to grow the dividends, while maintaining the versatility needed to invest in their business through production expansion, developing new products or reducing debt or really good solid companies. The criteria was:

dividend yield greater than or equal to the S&P 500 index or 2.5%

free cash flow greater than the dividend yield (operating cash flow after accounting for capital expenditures are greater than the amount needed to sustain current dividends)

price to earnings ratios less than the S&P 500 index of 20

trading price less than the average broker target price

Dividend 5 year compound average growth rate (CAGR) and Total 5 year return are for information purposes

Company               Mkt Cap  YTD  Price  Price    P/E          Div     5 Yr    FCF    5Yr Total

$  bil             % Change  Close                 Yield   CAGR  Yield   Return

AT&T                   246.449         16.4%          40.06    17.30     4.8       2.3       7.14    85.91

JPMorgan Chas 239.077          0.2             66.19     11.21      2.9       53.08    7.69   80.79

Verizon Comm  208.707        10.8            51.20     14.48     4.5         3.0       7.38   89.71

Intel                       175.804         7.9            37.16     17.94      2.8         8.8       6.7   117.36

Cisco Systems    155.545          14.2           31.02     14.69      3.4        50.9     7.99  76.64

UPS                           94.058        11.3          107.12     19.27      2.9        9.2      5.85    73.80

Royal Bank            120.707        8.9           80.76     11.77       4.1         9.0    15.23    94.17

BlackRock                59.859        8.1          367.96     19.61       2.5        16.9     3.77  124.55

Dow Chemical         59.733        3.0            53.01       8.05      3.5         23.4     5.79   86.48

BCE                             52.128        12.3           60.05   19.00      4.5         7.8      5.53    127.03

If you look at one of the companies you will see Cisco has increased its dividend 51% over the past 5 years and maintains a 40% payout ratio (not shown)

Linking to dividend paying stocks, one number to focus on with large capital stocks is total return over 5 years. The low is 76% and the high being 127% which is very good it terms of risk and keeping and increasing your wealth. While it is exciting to listen and hear about young companies, this chart shows some old established ones keep sending you dividends and are expected to do so for many more years.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time -to raising questions.