Good morning and welcome to my most recent edition of the top S&P500 dividend stocks. Today, I decided to take a look at the most recent rankings and found a returning player at the very top with Frontier Communications Corp (FTR) back where it’s been on and off in recent months. There is absolutely no doubt that FTR has been a star if you’re looking at it in terms of dividend payments. That being said, the story has not been as compelling if you’re looking at a more global picture that would include the total return instead of only accounting for dividends. I tried looking at returns for the top few names here over 1Yr, 3Yr and 5Yr and comparing those returns to the overall return of the S&P500. Here you go:

As you can see (not a huge surprise), stocks that are on top of this list have generally performed very poorly in the recent year and even over 3 or 5 years, when compared to the overall index. Does this mean they’ll continue to underperform if you buy them now? No, of course not. But these are not the most sound companies around so I would personally stay away from the top names on this list.

Do you hold any of them?

Here is the complete list: