Many dividend investors automatically ignore high yielding dividend stocks because they assume that such high yields are too good to be true but there is much more to evaluating a dividend stock than just looking at its yield. Intelligent investors will look not only at a stock’s yield, but also at its payout ratio or the ratio of dividend payments to net earnings. www.eDividendStocks.com; By: eChristian Investing; Words: 606

In further edited excerpts from the original article* eChristian Investing goes on to say:

The average yield of dividend stocks in the Dow Jones index is now 2.9%. The S&P 500 sports 15 stocks with dividend yields above 6%. Those are pretty attractive yields for income investors, given that a money market account currently offers less than a 1% return.

A high dividend payout ratio is typically a warning sign that the current dividend level is unsustainable but below are details on 5

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I run my fundamental stock screener searching stocks with the highest dividend yield. Report list only companies included in index S&P 500. Not surprisingly except one (GM) there are only financials and banks in top ten. The one of the highest yield was for financials compared to other sectors already before credit turmoils. And after deep fall we can see almost incredible yield over 30% for MBI.I list below one more table. Just to show top 10 high dividend stocks purged from financials.Top yielding stocks in S&P 500 Symbol Company Name Industry Yield (MBI) MBIA Ord ...