Investing in dividend stocks is something that everybody who wants to build a strong and reliable portfolio should consider. Dividend-paying stocks usually represent companies that are in a good financial position and whose management is committed to return capital to shareholders. Over the long-run, dividend-paying stocks usually outperform average stocks and companies often tend to increase their dividends over time, which results in good long-term returns. Moreover, dividend-paying stocks represent a good addition to a retirement portfolio as they can provide consistent regular pay-outs, which comes in handy when there are no other sources of income to rely on.
However, not all dividend-paying companies are good investments and it is usually suggested to pick high-quality businesses that have a solid record of paying dividends and buying back shares, in addition to using other metrics to analyze the company. In addition to looking into each company, a good way to identify dividend stocks to invest in is by following hedge funds into them. Hedge funds have a lot of experience in identifying the best stocks to invest in and they can employ skills and resources that are not always available to smaller investors. With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at some of the top dividend stocks of billionaire Julian Robertson‘s Tiger Management.
Billionaire Julian Robertson is a hedge fund legend with several decades of investing experience and his views and opinions are highly valued on the Street. In September, Mr. Robertson attended the Delivering Alpha conference, where he said that the stock market valuation is very high and expressed concerns that a bubble might be forming. He added that the high valuation is due to very low interest rates, which led to investors not having alternatives to get returns. In this way, once the rates start to go up, bonds will become more attractive to investors and the stock market will be affected.
However, Mr. Robertson is still fond of several stocks that he mentioned at the conference. He remains bullish on tech stocks like Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), which he considers are still cheap because of their potential. His position on tech stocks is also reaffirmed in Tiger Management’s latest 13F filing, where tech stocks amass over 35% of the equity portfolio as of the end of September.
Tiger Management’s latest 13F filing revealed an equity portfolio worth $552.72 million, which contains 44 long positions, mostly spread across technology, healthcare, and financial sectors. Julian Robertson is one of the best investors to imitate in order to generate market beating returns. According to our research, following Tiger Management into its long positions in companies with market caps above $1.0 billion, would’ve generated a return of over 30% over the 12-month period ended June 30, 2017, which is higher than the 19% gain posted by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY).
In addition, Tiger Management’s 13F portfolio revealed many positions in dividend-paying companies and we have selected five that have yields above 2%, which we will discuss on the following pages.
