(By Rich Bieglmeier) You might have heard about an investing strategy called the Dogs of the Dow. In a nutshell, the idea is to buy the 10 stock in the major index with the highest yields. It's a straight forward, easy to understand way to pick stocks.
iStock decided to add its own spin to the total return, income producing strategy. A Readers' Mailbox reader got us to thinking about dividend stocks, especially since they tend to perform better when the stock market sucks.
S&P maintains a list of stock they call Dividend Aristocrats. Sounds fancy, huh? The exclusive list contains 50 companies that have raised their dividends for 25 years in a row. Now that's impressive.
iStock used the Aristocrat list and picked the five companies with the highest yields. From there, we tossed the handful of names into some fancy portfolio optimization software to see which combination has outperformed the S&P 500 with similar risk as defined by standard deviation.
We'll call it the Little iRistocrats portfolio.
Using $10,000 dollars as an initial balance, we end up with a portfolio that spreads across four sectors with an average dividend yield of 6.75%, compare that to the bank. Now remember, every single one of these companies have raised their dividends for the past 25 years in a row. So, if history repeats, then the yield should grow year after year.
Additionally, if each member of the iRistocrats returned to their respective 52-week highs, the portfolio would increase in value by 26.87%. Tack on a 6.75% yield that's like to grow, and now we are talking about a very attractive total return package. In Fact, the computer model says the average return for the past 24 years and 7 months is 12.98%.
Without further buildup, here is the Little iRistocrats portfolio:
| Ticker | Company | Sector | Weight | Dividend | Yield | Initial Investment | Shares | Current Price* | 52 Week High |
| PBI | Pitney Bowes Inc | Consumer Goods | 26.10% | $1.50 | 11.10% | $2,610.80 | 197 | $13.24 | $23.47 |
| NUE | Nucor Corporation | Basic Materials | 5.00% | $1.46 | 4.10% | $500.00 | 14 | $35.67 | $45.75 |
| LEG | Leggett & Platt | Consumer Goods | 10.00% | $1.12 | 5.50% | $997.21 | 50 | $19.78 | $24.99 |
| HCP | HCP, Inc | Financial | 27.80% | $2.00 | 5.00% | $2,778.39 | 71 | $39.32 | $42.75 |
| T | AT&T | Technology | 31.10% | $1.76 | 5.20% | $3,113.60 | 91 | $34.15 | $34.41 |
| Portfolio Totals: | | 100.00% | | 6.75% | $10,000.00 | | | |
| * based on 6-4-12 closing prices |