Here’s How You Find Winning Dividend Stocks

Most advice comes in two forms: the whimsical and the mechanical.

Whimsical advice sounds good and is often repeated, but has little practical value. Think quotes like “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Mechanical advice isn’t as quotable or romantic, but it gets results.

Think a textbook that helps you learn new skills. Or a tried-and-true formula that delivers consistently good results for its followers.

In the financial world, a lot of advice is purely whimsical. Investors who claim to trade entirely by “gut feeling” or pretentious Wall Street types who say things like “To understand the market, one must first understand the works of Mozart.”

Today’s article is not pretentious or whimsical.

Instead, I’m sharing a well-tested and popular checklist for finding high-quality dividend stocks.

Here are the key metrics you need to look for.

1.Price-To-Earnings Ratio Lower Than The S&P 500

“Price-To-Earnings Ratio” (PE) is a term that essentially means this: how much a stock costs, and how much of the company you get for that price.