Show HN: An index of all monthly dividend stocks

[mystertea]

In my quest for finding high yield dividend stocks, I've noticed there isn't really a good tool for finding such stocks (that I can find, anyway), only pay-walled sites that are confusing and inaccessible. This little project seeks to remedy that.

I'm sharing this in the hopes that you'll find it useful, but also to get feedback, in particular, about monetizing. While I built this to be useful, I would like to make some money on it, so if you have any recommendations, I'm all eyeballs. I fear I may have to resort to advertisements to keep the barrier to entry low.

[anonu]

* "index" has particular connotation in finance. This is just a list - not an index.

* Why "monthly"? There may be higher quality companies that pay quarterly. Why exclude them?

* Have you looked at the myriad dividend ETFs? Things like SDY showcase funds that have regularly raised dividends YoY. ETFs may be a better way to get consistent yield and yield growth. Look into SDY, DVY or higher-powered div rates with SDIV, SRET.

* Lots of people noting tax treatment of divs as well as pointing out the "dividend irrelevance theory". Tax treatment will vary depending on the type of income. If you're looking purely at equity dividends then they will most probably be treated as income. However, with ETFs you may be exemptions depending on the income source. For example US Treasury ETFs that pay dividends are exempt from US State taxes (look at Bondbloxx suite of treasury ETFs). Municipal bond ETFs are exempt from both state and federal tax in most cases.

* Dividend irrelevance: If a $100 stock pays $1 div then its stock price is adjusted to $99. So there's no free lunch. The point is you want cash-flow generating businesses where management has decided they don't really know what to do with extra cash laying around so they hand it back to their shareholders. Being able to consistently generate these dividends and GROW the dividends indicates typically high quality, value stocks. The short-term end of the yield curve is yielding 5.4% (https://www.ustreasuryyieldcurve.com/) right now... so a company would -- very broadly speaking -- need to engage in projects with hurdle rates greater than what they could get in very safe bets with the US Government.

* Other forms of yield harvesting or income generation are writing OTM calls. A consistent strategy can be found in ETFs like JEPI or XYLE

* Re: monetizing your site. The web is awash with finance websites. This data can be found in a screener tool (finviz.com amongst many). People want trading ideas, so maybe this is better served as a newsletter or similar. Also, why should I trust your site. Financial data is notoriously finicky. Old data gets re-stated. What are your data sources?

[roland35]

Dividends generally are not super useful to investors - you don't get to decide when they occur and when you pay tax. If you are in the accumulation phase of life this isn't really useful if you are going to be reinvesting the money anyways. They aren't bad, just not really worth the hype.

As always, bogleheads has a good writeup on dividends: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Dividend

[arbuge]

Dividends may keep management disciplined, knowing they have to share some profits with shareholders. Companies without dividend payments that retain all their earnings may be more prone to destruction of shareholder value through empire building sprees by management.

[nemo44x]

Indeed, hence why buybacks are so popular. However keep in mind that there are qualified dividends as well which are taxed at the preferential long term capital gains rate. Still a tax though but rolling those back into the stock has good long term results.

I think congress was talking about taxing buybacks?

[jjav]

> you don't get to decide when they occur and when you pay tax

In a taxable account.

I keep high dividend stocks and ETFs in IRA accounts. For taxable accounts, I prefer stocks that are either growing or doing buybacks.

[ricardobayes]

What is laid out here is called "yield chasing". Companies with extraorbitant dividend yield often end up losing much more on a 5Y timescale. There are very, very few companies that pay more than 3% and not end up losing money on the long run. (And even that is very bleak compared to just a vanilla S&P 500 yield). If there was a "magic bullet" high yield stock, everyone would flock and buy that one.

[sakopov]

There are plenty of great, stable companies that payout more than 3%. A lot of them are just value-traps like Coca-Cola, Verizon and AT&T where the stock price just sits in the same channel for decades but pays dividends slightly above inflation. There are also some high growth companies which pay great dividends but they're very hard to come by and usually have a few years of good track record before the run out of steam. So, there is no magic bullet in dividend investing. You always have to look at company financials and overall market trends and re-balance accordingly or else it might be a losing game. For example most bank stocks had their bottoms fall out in the last 3-4 months, however, there are plenty of banks whose stock prices got hit but financial positioning was immune to the crisis at hand. We're having a similar trend with REITs as well. It's just a matter of finding winners at their low valuations and getting divies while also benefiting from the stock price appreciation when the market turns around.

[sokoloff]

I’ve heard those called “accidental high yielders”.

Any company that has paid a dividend and whose stock price has crashed will have a high yield on paper. Those stocks are usually better to avoid rather than rush to buy someone else’s problem investment.

[JKCalhoun]

Perhaps you would prefer so-called "Dividend Aristocrats" that have a long track-record of high dividends.

[kmlx]

some of the mining giants usually offer great dividends and pretty stable stock.

check: rio tinto, bhp, anglo american, glencore.

[mystertea]

It looks like many of the high yield dividend stocks are leveraged funds. Does the same rule hold true in that arena? The historical data on those stocks doesn't seem to support that on first glance, at least.

[Oberbaumbrucke]

There's a lot that pay more than 3% (mining, oil, banks). Your point stands for say >6%.

[habosa]

Nice site! I agree, this information is generally pretty hard to find.

I hate that dividends have such disadvantageous tax treatment in America because I think dividends are the healthiest relationship between companies and investors. They try to make money and then give you some of it. As long as the dividend amount is healthy for both the investors and the company your interests are aligned.

Stock buybacks are such shenanigans in comparison: they make money and use it to inflate the value of their shares. Often they do this to hit certain price targets that help with executive compensation (or just image). And in order to actually get your profit you have to sell, which means you’re no longer an investor.

[akg_67]

IMO, you are very unlikely to monetize using anything other than advertisements. Just use google Adsense and focus on driving traffic to your site. A few things you can do:

* Expand the focus of the site to near-retiree/ retiree/ Fire and their need for regular monthly cash flow.

* Focus on portfolio construction using monthly income securities for different scenarios, economic cycles, etc. use criteria like low monthly cash flow variance, price stability, capital preservation etc.

* Add a blog/article section where you can post articles addressing your target audience.

* get inspiration from a few subreddit focusing on similar topics, for example /r/dividends, /r/qyldgang, /r/jepq, etc. Try to answer questions typically raised in such subreddits and provide tools on your site related to frequent queries made on such forums.

[tndibona]

I’ve been down the Adsense route and decided to get off of it. Aside from the fact that it will ruin the look of the site, and just turning you into a data mining point - The pay was abysmal for the work put into getting 10k users a month. It’s hard work trying to go subreddits and self promoting whilst risking getting banned.

I think this site is giving users some value that stock portals are not. I’d say keep shaping the product till you capture as much value from the big guys. Then hopefully a better idea for monetizing will crop up from this journey.

[mystertea]

Thanks for the constructive feedback here. Seems like this is the only way to go for something like this.

[moneywoes]

What about affiliate deals with motley fool type sites

[bob1029]

When looking at investing in stocks (long term, growth), I weigh the dividend yield as a minuscule fraction of my overall decision. If you are buying "monthly dividend" stocks with hopes of securing a stable, long-term cashflow (i.e. by way of mostly just inspecting their historical yields), you are in for a really shitty ride.

The dividend is a noob test for an investor. Only in very targeted situations should you actually care about this number. Only when every other factor leads you to ??? should you glance at this figure and allow it to push you one way or the other. For example, "Should I buy ATT or VZ"? Trick question - You should buy both. Diversification is more important than dividend yield.

Holding something that yields 20% over the last 5 years sounds great, until the board (or more likely, market/competition forces) decide to light the whole thing on fire. Now, your entire original investment is up in smoke overnight. If you had been listening to the earnings calls, you might have developed some suspicions, but more likely than not your DD consists entirely of websites like this.

[thunky]

To add to this, if you think of a dividend as a forced sale of some of your shares (because that's effectively what it is), it doesn't look quite as appealing. A dividend is not free money.

That said, I do think that companies with consistent earnings and a solid track record of paying dividends are a different breed than a company than one that is driven by growth (often to their detriment). So it is worth paying attention to.

[mystertea]

Looking at your point regarding that earning call, it seems you're looking at this in light of a more traditional company and not an ETF/REIT/Leveraged fund. Forgive me if I'm wrong in that assumption. For conventional value investing, this is probably true, I'm no expert.

It does seem to me that there is room for a stock like this in one's portfolio though, as part of a larger strategy. Maybe a high yield leveraged fund is only a small portion of your stock, or you need to convert some of your assets to income for a few years.

[sershe]

There are lots of people commenting about dividends not being useful or whatever, but I think they are not your target audience :)

And for your target audience, the people who like dividend investing (or liked it in low rate environment, like me) you appear to be missing a key feature... many/most dividend investors are looking for companies with history of uninterrupted payouts with no decreases in dividend (cuts) over at least 10+ years (probably longer now, basically including at least one recession and the more the better). So, # of years without dividend cuts is an interesting number. Another interesting number is yield vs history (for a company with stable payouts it may indicate whether price is high or low, assuming the stable payouts continue).

It's basically supposed to be /a bit/ bond-like :)

[mystertea]

Really good info, thanks. I'll add the dividend cut metric to my list. Not sure what you mean by yield vs history. I do have a chart comparing the yield to the stock price over time, but the window is only 4 years back. I'll try and expand that window, too.

[tndibona]

I like the site. I’ve actually tried to use Schwab and Fidelity to locate long term stable dividend stocks but their search and filters are complex. Your site mostly lists funds so an option to filter by stock, or ETF, or managed fund would be helpful. Also a column that shows the expansion next to the abbreviated ticker name would be gold. Thanks for the effort

[mystertea]

Awesome, thanks for the feedback! That filter seems like a good idea--I'll work on implementing it. An expansion at larger view sizes should be doable!

[mystertea]

Just wanted to let you know that I added that feature. Hope it helps.

[immy]

A tool like this would add value to a brokerage…but I don’t see them working with you when they already have the data and charting. Maybe see if you want to join the team building Mezzi (https://mezziapp.com)

[oa335]

Seems like a decent start. As feedback, I’d suggest you take a look at quantumonline.com for an example of 1. The types of securities that income investors care about and 2. The type of information that income investors care about.

[mystertea]

Thanks for the feedback, this is exactly the sort of info I've been lacking, not being an expert in the space myself (only a journeyman, if that). I'll check this out.

[johng]

I'm using the site now... very handy. I wish there were a way to filter it. For example, maybe I don't want to see covered calls.

What if I just wanted to see normal stocks (however you define that).

[dmurray]

Are there any "normal stocks" on the list? Everything I checked is an ETF, ETN or REIT, which may have structural or tax-based reasons to return cashflow to investors monthly.

Companies that actually make widgets or SaaSes or self-driving cars or other pillars of the 2023 economy seem to pay dividends either quarterly or not at all.

[mystertea]

Good idea, I'll look into adding that feature. And thanks for the compliment.

[tndibona]

I see a ton of comments saying dividends don’t matter. Dumb question: Isn’t the idea of common stock to partake in company ownership and collect the share of profits from said ownership ? Since when did this concept die down and the sole purpose of stock ownership became to speculate on future valuation in hopes of selling? As the owner of the company- I should want my fellow owners to stay invested right ?

[anonymoushn]

Dividends are a tax-inefficient version of buybacks.

[WJW]

Only in the USA.

[SillyUsername]

Does this show stocks on all exchanges such as LSE?

[HumanReadable]

It's a well executed website, but there is no good reason for it to exist. You shouldn't be on a quest to find high yield dividend stocks in the first place.

Whether a stock pays dividends really shouldn't factor in to your decision as to whether to buy it. Any dividend a company pays out makes the company worth that much less. Whatever you stand to gain from the dividend, you stand to lose in the value of the stock you own.

When buying a stock the only thing that matters are its fundamentals. Ie. is the company's assets and future earning potential worth more than the current price of the stock to you? Unless you have information that the market doesn't, this is not a question whose answer you will reliably get right.

[gtani]

There's paywalled sites and then there's the tools you get at Schwab, e-trade, Fidelity, TDA, (maybe Vanguard, their apps investment is lagging), which have detailed info about std dev total returns, Sharpe/sortino ratios, correlations, tax consequnces on a large universe of assets

- quarterly pays,

- preferreds

- laddered investment grade bond portfolios,

- asset and mortgaged-backed

- high yield bonds,

- REITs, hot sectors are cell towers, datacenters, p ersonal storage units

- LP, MLP (especially energy pipelines) royalty trusts

(and that's just US domestic... )

_________________

this vid (Ben Felix) about JEPI/XYLD type "covered call" etfs is instructive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMLVdY8y8vM&t=312s

[mystertea]

True, the trading sites are more comprehensive, but I found them difficult to use, at least eTrade, with clunky and confusing interfaces that require a lot of knowledge to use effectively. Though, Maybe that last bit is a necessary component, and my site won't be useful for the experienced investor.

[roschdal]

Dividends are useless, because the stock falls in value relative to the dividend when it is paid.

[yardstick]

Dividends allow you to obtain money from the business without giving up control. Small distinction, and only really relevant to those with large holdings.

[fancyfredbot]

How much tax do you pay on dividends compared to realised gains on stocks? These two are rarely the same and sometimes a dividend is taxed preferably.

[bartvk]

But what if you prefer that steady income? It’s a honest question.

[dasloop]

Money in the pocket. If you trust the company you assume that the stock will recover the value eventually.

[tndibona]

Also, hey congrats on your product making HN front page. It isn’t easy

[mystertea]

Thanks!! I'm happy it made it.

[NicoJuicy]

My sniff test failed:

Couldn't find Proximus ( https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PROX.BR?p=PROX.BR&.tsrc=fin-... )

Since it has a 20% dividend based on it's current share price

Equally important as finding it , is that Belgium has 30% dividend tax.

[VancouverMan]

The site's "About" page says: "This site only tracks US-based dividend stocks with a monthly payout."

https://thedividendlist.com/about/

[jldugger]

> to get feedback, in particular, about monetizing

Why should I care about high dividend yield? FINRA prohibits "selling the dividend"[1], and this project seems one step removed. Not illegal or necessarily deceptive, but seems closer to unsound than sound investing advice.

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dividend-selling.asp