Dividend Superstars

The stocks presented below form the trading universe for my long-term covered call and naked put trading strategy.  You can read more about this strategy on the Trading Plan page located here: http://troysmoneytree.wordpress.com/trading-plan/.

These stocks are broken out into 3 categories based on the number of consectutive years they have increased their annual dividend.  The three categories are Champions, Contenders, and Challengers.  Champions are the ‘cream of the crop’ in that they have raised their dividend every year for a minimum of 25 years.  Contenders have raised their dividend every year for at least 10 years but less than 25 years.  Challengers are ‘up and comers’ who have raised their dividend every year for the past 9 years and are on the cusp of becoming Contenders.

These lists do not include every company which has met the annual dividend increase criteria.  The lists have been further filtered to eliminate all Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITS).  In addition, the list is restricted to those companies have a market capitalization greater than $5B.  Further, the lists only include those companies which have grown their dividend payouts an average of 10% or more for the past 10 years (9 years for the Challengers).   Data to compile the lists was obtained from www.dripinvesting.org.