By Ian Salisbury
It isn't easy to find attractive dividend yields right now, and it's even harder to find high-yielding stocks that don't look like yield traps. That said, there are a small number of stocks boasting 5% dividend yields that Wall Street is decidedly bullish about.
It's a tricky year for dividend investors. The S&P 500 is up a solid 8.7%, but that growth, along with the popularity of dividend-averse tech stocks, has pushed the yield on the S&P 500 close to 1% -- near record lows.
Nonetheless, a few stocks are defying market gravity, boasting 5% yields and stock prices rising fast enough to outpace the market. To identify them we screened for S&P 500 companies meeting both these criteria in 2026.
We found five names: Healthpeak Properties, yielding 6.3%; Verizon Communications, which yields 6.1%; Altria Group, 5.8%; Realty Income, 5.3%; and Edison International, 5.1%.
One thing worth noting -- while all these stocks have rallied this year, there is no free lunch. They all have downsides, too.
Shares of Healthpeak Properties, a healthcare-focused real estate investment trust, are up more than 20% this year, from just over $16 to around $19.50. But they are still well below their five-year high of more than $36.
The company has faced multiple headwinds. Like many REITs it struggled when the Federal Reserve sharply raised interest rates in 2022 to fight inflation, pushing up borrowing costs and depressing the value of real estate assets. One of the company's major property businesses has also been under pressure, with the market for life sciences and biotech lab space in a major slump.
Still, Healthpeak impressed investors with its latest earnings report on May 5. The company reported adjusted funds from operations, the REIT equivalent to operating profits, of 45 cents a share, beating Wall Street forecasts for 43 cents a share. It also hiked its full-year outlooks for profits and adjusted FFO. Following the news, shares jumped 18%.
Verizon is also in the midst of a turnaround. The telecom, which cut 13,000 jobs last November, has managed to quickly pivot to subscriber growth. Shares jumped nearly 4% last month, after the company reported adding 55,000 new postpaid phone customers in the quarter, the first time it had reported a positive number in a decade.
Marlboro cigarette-maker Altria has gradually seen sales slide as fewer and fewer Americans light up. But the company reported first-quarter sales growth last month, thanks to higher prices.
Write to Ian Salisbury at ian.salisbury@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 18, 2026 15:00 ET (19:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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