Welcome to SI, CURTM. There are plenty of stocks that meet your requirements. Although of course, "safe" is a word that is scary to affix with certainty to any stock, especially in today's economy and with current stock market volatility.
From your ideas, I'd be guessing you'd want big companies with good history of dividends.
Eliminating from consideration any companies that have reduced dividends now, or maybe even within past years.
Possibly one way to confirm safety is to choose from a list of companies that are raising dividends. Where so many companies are now reducing dividends to the extent that cutting dividends almost seems normal and acceptable (and it wasn't before), if we have managements raising dividends, that is a sign of commitment to stockholders and also management's faith in their ability to produce continued results that will support the dividend.
To start with, I suggest you also hook up with this SI site, "Dividend investing for retirement". There there is a focus on identifying and tracking and listing good dividend payers. Helpful to you would be the stocks of "dividend achievers" and "dividend aristocrats". As a screen there (although it's outdated now) I like this post by Steve Felix, for example, and you might too:
Message 25431929
I would say there would be two types of "safe" dividend-paying stocks that should be considered and bought in retirement (assuming someone will live 10-30 or more years after retiring). One would be companies where the dividend is high and sustainable, but maybe where there's not much growth in the dividend. The second is where the dividend is low, but where over time, the dividend growth is substantial (e.g. a high dividend yield for somebody now on cost basis of shares of Proctor&Gamble bought 10 or 20 years ago).
For me, I'm not much willing to step up now for big stocks that have already moved up off lows. So for example whereas I like MMM for its growth and dividend and p/e, and a buy now might work out okay over the next few years, I'm not considering it for a buy now (although I am in with shares bought both at higher and lower prices than currently). Given my preference, two stocks I suggest looking at now are ABT and SYY. ABT has an excellent dividend history, it trades near it's 12-mo low, and it yields 3.6%. Also Sysco Corporation, the dominant USA food distributor. It has a good history of dividend increases and yields 4.1%. It's p/e I find is a little high at 13, although it's still a relative bargain in that in most of the past ten years this quality company has traded at a p/e of over 20.
Something a little different - a technology stock to balance other types of dividend payers in a portfolio - would be maybe, maybe Intel. That one's increased its dividend every year for the past few that I'm looking at, yields 3.7% now, and has plenty of cash to support that dividend, it seems to me.
I have shares in ABT, SYY, MMM, INTC, SO, AGL, JNJ, and TOT and COP. (I hold more shares of COP than TOT. TOT may be the better buy at this point, I don't know.)
Good luck with your choices. |
