Dividend Payers Underperform Non-Payers In October

The dividend paying stocks in the S&P 500 Index underperformed their non-paying counterparts in the month of October. The payers October monthly return equaled 2.34% versus the non-payers return of 2.84%. On a year to date basis, the payers lagged the non-payers as well, 6.01% versus 7.13%, respectively. A large part of the underformance can be attributed to the weak results from the financial sector. The financial sector weighting in the S&P 500 is nearly 19% of the index. During October the financial sector declined -1.99% versus an overall index return of 1.48%.

Additional information on the index performance for October can be found under Standard & Poor's MarketAttributes section of their website.

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Source: Standard & Poor's