For dividend lovers, the past year has been brutal.
Dividend cuts have come at the
fastest pace in more than 50 years. Check out some of
these companies that have cut their dividend in the past 12
months or so:
Company
Dividend Cut
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM)
86%
Fifth Third Bancorp (Nasdaq:
FITB)
98%
Capital One Financial (NYSE: COF)
87%
Vulcan Materials
49%
Dow Chemical
64%
General Electric
68%
Those aren't even modest little trims. They're whoppers.
And for some of these companies, cuts like this haven't
happened in a long time. In its 112-year history, Dow
Chemical, for example, had never cut its dividend. For
General Electric, you'd have to go back 71 years to find the
last reduction.
The news gets even scarier. Ned Davis Research assessed
S&P 500 stock returns from January 1972 to April 2009,
based on companies' dividend policies:
Category
Annual Gain, 1972 to 2009
$100 Became ...
Dividend Cutters or Eliminators
0.5%
$120
Non-Dividend Payers
0.7%
$129
S&P 500 Continued... |