Dividend Payers Outperform in January

The dividend payers in the S&P 500 Index outperformed the non-payers for the month of January.

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Source: Standard and Poor's Market Attributes

The usual dividend leaders are the financial stocks; however, in January, the financial sector had a number of adverse dividend actions. According to S&P:

...Financials (ABK, C, FHN, and MBI) lowered their rate and two (PGR and SOV) suspended it. While there is still concern over the deterioration within the Financials sector, S&P believes the vast majority of S&P 500 companies will continue their long history of dividend payments and increases in 2008.

S&P stills sees dividend growth for 2008 versus 2007 to be in the 9.3% area.