Reinvesting dividends is one great—and very simple—way to grow your wealth. Today, we'll go over how this method works… and share a few details that can make a big difference in the final outcome.
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The best dividend stocks offer solid payouts that investors can rely on for years. They help investors build wealth over time, offer a growing dividend, and are backed by the safety of a company with a solid track record. With a sizable portion of their returns paid out in cash, these top stocks are a great choice for retirees or anyone seeking income.
Top dividend stocks can offer investors the following benefits:
The best dividend stocks give you the chance to build wealth while offering a growing stream of dividends for decades, giving you the cash to spend however you like. Certain investors prefer dividend stocks with high yields and some growth over time, while others prefer a lower yield today but higher growth potential over time.
This list of 11 dividend stocks offers options for both approaches.
| Stock (Ticker) | Dividend yield | Five-year annualized dividend growth | Five-year annualized return |
| Verizon Communications (VZ) | 5.9% | 2.0% | 2.0% |
| Edison International (EIX) | 5.0% | 5.7% | 8.6% |
| Kimco Realty (KIM) | 4.4% | 8.6% | 5.7% |
| Fidelity National Financial (FNF) | 4.3% | 8.4% | 4.5% |
| Lamar Advertising (LAMR) | 4.1% | 19.9% | 10.9% |
| Paychex (PAYX) | 3.8% | 11.9% | 4.2% |
| CareTrust REIT (CTRE) | 3.7% | 6.0% | 15.0% |
| Public Storage (PSA) | 3.7% | 8.5% | 4.7% |
| NextEra Energy (NEE) | 2.9% | 10.7% | 2.8% |
| McDonald’s (MCD) | 2.7% | 7.3% | 5.0% |
| Coca-Cola (KO) | 2.4% | 4.5% | 11.1% |
Some of these stocks are also included in MarketWise’s list of best retirement stocks for 2026.
Everyone knows Verizon as one of the major U.S. telecom players, but maybe less well known is that it pays a massive dividend of nearly 6%. The trade-off for that high current yield is slow dividend growth, but investors can decide for themselves how they want to play the dividend game. The stock has not had a great five-year run, but its higher current yield gives investors plenty of reason to stick around and wait for the stock to catch a bid.
Market cap: $201 billion
Dividend yield: 5.9%
Electrical utilities can be great dividend picks because they enjoy stable, growing demand for their key product. They also tend to increase prices year after year, and their stock tends to be relatively stable because of these advantages. For California-based Edison, that has resulted in an attractive dividend and a history of raising it quickly.
Market cap: $27 billion
Dividend yield: 5.0%
Kimco Realty is a real estate investment trust (“REIT”) that owns grocery-anchored shopping centers and mixed-use properties in major metro areas. Kimco’s “must-visit” properties generate reliable rents that grow over time, and as a REIT, it must pay out most of its income as dividends.
The company’s meaty current yield doesn’t come at the expense of strong dividend growth over the past five years either.
Market cap: $16 billion
Dividend yield: 4.4%
Fidelity National Financial may not be a familiar name for many investors, but if you’ve ever bought or sold a house, there’s a good chance you’ve used the company for its title insurance. It’s the leading player in this oligopolistic industry, and it has delivered excellent returns over time, even if the past five years have been ho-hum.
It offers a high current yield, and management hasn’t been stingy about increasing the payout over the past half-decade, giving investors reason to hold the stock for a while.
Market cap: $13 billion
Dividend yield: 4.3%
It seems like artificial intelligence (“AI”) or tech is disrupting nearly every business these days, so it’s refreshing when you find a business such as Lamar’s – billboard advertising – that seems largely unaffected. The company has some 360,000 billboards in the U.S. and Canada that advertise local and national brands to travelers.
The company has grown its meaty dividend nearly 20% annually over the past five years, on the way to putting up nearly 11% annualized returns.
Market cap: $16 billion
Dividend yield: 4.1%
Paychex offers human resources management and payroll processing for small- and medium-sized businesses, among other related services. It has delivered tremendous returns for investors over time, even if the past five years have been a bit mediocre.
But that may be just a brief pause before another period of exceptional performance. Today’s investors can lock in a strong dividend and look for signs that management will raise that payout aggressively moving forward.
Market cap: $43 billion
Dividend yield: 3.8%
CareTrust may not be a household name like others on this list, but it has delivered solid returns to investors, with a high yield and a growing payout over time.
As a REIT, it must make sizable dividend payments, and its business of leasing out healthcare facilities on long-term leases with annual rent escalators ensures the stable revenue that’s a prerequisite for a top dividend stock.
Market cap: $9 billion
Dividend yield: 3.7%
Public Storage is the behemoth in the self-storage space. As a real estate investment trust, it has to pay out most of its income as dividends. It offers a high current yield that has grown at a brisk 8.5% annually over the past five years, meaning you’re getting the best of both worlds.
The REIT has redesigned its executive incentive system to help drive stock outperformance, a move that should help keep the dividend AND share price growing.
Market cap: $61 billion
Dividend yield: 3.7%
NextEra is one of the largest North American electric utilities, with about 80 gigawatts of generation and storage capacity. NextEra is almost the definition of a “must-have” asset, with a product that will always be in demand, even while offering strong upside as AI-driven power demand pushes prices higher.
The stock’s above-average dividend has been growing quickly over the past half-decade, and recent price weakness may be a long-term opportunity.
Market cap: $179 billion
Dividend yield: 2.9%
McDonald’s may be famous for its Big Mac, but the firm makes much of its money from franchise fees and leasing out the real estate that sits beneath its thousands of restaurants.
As one of the most popular consumer businesses, the Golden Arches has shown notable durability, helping drive a solid dividend that’s grown at a fast 7.3% over the past five years.
Market cap: $193 billion
Dividend yield: 2.7%
While everyone knows the company’s namesake drink, Coca-Cola is a drink distributor that can deliver whatever consumers want – sodas, water, sports drinks, and juices. Coca-Cola has proven that it can thrive over decades, while increasing its dividend for 64 straight years.
Although its yield is on the lower side of our list, it has grown at a reasonable 4.5% annualized clip, while the stock has returned about 11% annually on average over the past five years.
Market cap: $377 billion
Dividend yield: 2.4%
The best dividend stocks offer strong returns over time that investors can rely on year after year, and Wall Street veteran Whitney Tilson has spent decades hunting for a business so durable that an investor could build an entire retirement portfolio around it.
Now, he says he has found a business that could deliver even bigger, more durable returns than the legendary business of Berkshire Hathaway and keep delivering for decades.
Whitney calls it “America’s Greatest Retirement Stock.”
Most investors have never heard of this company, and it only has around 100 employees. The company doesn’t exactly sit in a major metropolitan area either, doing business on a stretch of West Texas and New Mexico bigger than the size of Rhode Island.
That might make you think of oil, but this company doesn’t drill wells and doesn’t own a data center or generate any power. Instead, it owns the ground beneath one of the largest industrial build-outs in modern American history.
And every single time someone wants to use that ground, this company collects a payment.
Whitney recently took a helicopter out to see it for himself… Click here to watch his exclusive investigation.
Regards,
James Royal, PhD
The post 11 Best Dividend Stocks for 2026: High Yields and High Growth appeared first on MarketWise.
Rick Rule is the GOAT of resource investing—and we just sat down together to go through every major commodity on the board. From gold's pullback to uranium's structural deficit, the opportunities are bigger than most investors realize.
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Wall Street veteran Whitney Tilson has spent decades hunting for one thing…
A business so durable, and so hard to copy, that an investor could build an entire retirement portfolio around it.
For years, his answer was Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B).
Whitney owned shares… recommended the company to his friends, family, and readers… and even flew to Omaha for 27 of the past 28 Berkshire annual meetings.
But today, he says he has found a business that could deliver even bigger, more durable returns… and keep delivering for decades.
Whitney calls it “America’s Greatest Retirement Stock.”
It’s a company that most investors have never heard of. It has barely more than 100 employees and sits on a stretch of West Texas and New Mexico bigger than the size of Rhode Island.
Now, Texas might make you think about oil…
But this company doesn’t drill wells… doesn’t own a data center… or generate any power. Instead, it owns the ground beneath one of the largest industrial build-outs in modern American history.
And every single time someone wants to use that ground… this company collects a payment.
Whitney recently took a helicopter out to see it for himself… Click here to watch his exclusive investigation.
Or read on as we dig into this compelling opportunity…
Before we get to the company itself… and yes, Whitney reveals the name and ticker symbol free of charge, which we’ll cover below… it helps to understand why he’s making such an extraordinary claim in the first place.
After all, this is a legendary investor who spent nearly two decades running hedge funds in Manhattan. And for most of his career, he told anyone who would listen that Berkshire Hathaway was the single best place to park retirement money.
He hasn’t turned against Berkshire, exactly. In his free daily letter this January, Whitney highlighted several of his favorite stocks for 2026. There, he noted Berkshire’s share price was trading at about a 7% discount to its intrinsic value, concluding that:
At that price, I view Berkshire as a comfortable hold, not a buy.
And sure enough, so far this year, Berkshire has traded in a fairly tight, go-nowhere range.
More recently, as the stock pulled back to near its lows in May, Whitney did a full analysis of Berkshire stock, upgrading his advice slightly…
The stock is trading at a 14.6% discount to my estimate of intrinsic value.
So, in the past year, Berkshire has swung from being 8.9% overvalued to 14.6% undervalued. That’s why it wasn’t attractive then – but is today.
I’m especially bullish because in addition to today’s discounted stock price, I’m optimistic that [new CEO Greg] Abel can create value via operational improvements and capital allocation.
This combination leads me to believe that Berkshire’s stock is highly likely to beat the S&P 500 [Index] over the next five years, perhaps by a margin of two to three percentage points. So if the S&P 500 compounds at 5%, I would expect Berkshire to do roughly 7% to 8% – with a bias toward the upside.
That’s a solid outperformance expectation… But if you’re putting new money to work for the next 10 or 20 years, Whitney believes there’s a better option.
This single stock returned more than 2,200% over the past decade. Over that same stretch, he notes, the S&P 500 returned about 330%, Amazon (AMZN) returned about 660%, and Apple (AAPL) returned about 1,200%.
By his math, this single company beat Apple, Amazon, and the S&P 500… combined.
The question is… can it do it again?
This company operates what Whitney calls the world’s most profitable tollbooth.
It’s a surprise beneficiary of two industries that the federal government is now treating as matters of national security… artificial intelligence (“AI”) and energy. Plus, it overlaps with a third resource that almost nobody on Wall Street is watching.
The core business of America’s Greatest Retirement Stock is simple: It owns land… And it leaves the hard work to everyone else.
When an oil giant pumps crude from under its land, the company collects a royalty.
When someone pulls natural gas from the same ground, another royalty.
When a tech giant wants to build on the surface, it pays lease and easement fees.
And when anyone needs water out in that desert… sure enough, they buy it from this company, too.
That’s four separate streams of income, just from owning a big patch of dirt. And because the company operates like a tollbooth, it hardly has any costs.
As a result, this company’s business model produces incredible numbers…
It carries no debt, has averaged gross margins of around 90% for the past five years, and converts more than 60 cents of every dollar in revenue into pure profit.
All that cash has to go somewhere. That’s why, while the company pays a regular quarterly dividend like many blue chips, it also pays a special dividend once or twice a year to shareholders that can run 5 to 10 times the size of the normal payout.
By Whitney’s count, an investor who held 1,000 shares would have collected more than $45,000 in total dividends in 2024 alone… and roughly $146,000 over the past six years.
Of course, those amounts depend entirely on when you buy and how much you own. But the point is that this is a business that gushes cash and hands it back to its investors. And Whitney expects it will keepdoing so, just as it has through the many booms and busts over the past century.
And right now, the heavyweights are taking notice…
Eric Schmidt, the man who ran Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google for a decade, jumped in this past December. He’s building massive AI data-center campuses on this exact stretch of West Texas land. Schmidt explained his reasoning in an interview with Fortune magazine earlier this year:
Energy is the main constraint in scaling AI. If we want to keep America competitive, we have to solve this problem… We realized that combining my technical expertise with [this company’s] unrivaled land, abundant water, and access to low-cost energy could create the infrastructure needed to meet the virtually infinite demand for compute.
One of the most connected technologists alive looked across the entire country for the best place to solve AI’s biggest problem… and picked this company’s land.
Add it all up, and Whitney lands on an extraordinary projection. He believes a $10,000 investment in this company today could grow into $220,000 over the long term. (You can watch his full interview by clicking here.)
That’s not a guarantee, of course. But Whitney argues that number could even prove conservative if the build-out he witnessed in Texas keeps accelerating.
So let’s dig into the details that Whitney believes will drive the next decade of gains…
America’s Greatest Retirement Stock, according to Whitney Tilson, is Texas Pacific Land (TPL).
It owns roughly 882,000 acres across West Texas and southern New Mexico, with most of that footprint sitting in the Permian Basin… the most productive oil basin on the planet. As Fortune noted, that’s more acreage than the entire state of Rhode Island.
For years, that land mostly just sat there… Then came the shale revolution, and the royalty checks started rolling in. And now, something even bigger is happening…
On his first full day back in the White House, President Donald Trump stood beside three of the most powerful men in technology… OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Oracle’s (ORCL) Larry Ellison, and SoftBank’s (SFTBY) Masayoshi Son… and announced a venture called Project Stargate.
The plan calls for up to $500 billion of AI infrastructure spending in the U.S. by 2029.
Trump framed the program as a response to a national emergency, and promised to use executive orders liberally to clear the way for the construction permits and power plants the facilities will need.
And right now, the first Stargate data-center campus is going up outside Abilene, Texas.
The campus now covers ground equal to about 750 football fields, with plans for enough electricity to power 750,000 homes. And just down the road, the Pentagon is pouring $1.6 billion into Dyess Air Force Base to prepare it for the B-21 Raider, America’s new stealth bomber.
Whitney flew to Abilene with his research team, then rented a helicopter to see all this construction from the air. His guide was an old friend and longtime source – third-generation Texas wildcatter Charles Schroeder… who everybody simply calls “Cactus.”
Cactus lives in Abilene and drives past these sites every day. As Cactus notes in Whitney’s interview:
It’s like it pops up overnight… Those construction people are working 24/7. They have lights. They work all night, they work all weekend.
AI spending by the biggest tech companies is expected to jump 71% this year alone, from roughly $380 billion in 2025 to an estimated $650 billion in 2026, according to my colleague Jim Royal’s analysis of the major tech companies. Whitney pegs spending by the five biggest players at nearly $700 billion this year.
And this stretch of West Texas is ideal for four reasons, as Whitney notes:
Vast open acreage… cheap and abundant power… massive water supplies… and the right geology – rock formations that hold the natural gas needed to power these projects.
America’s Greatest Retirement Stock controls all four on nearly a million acres… in the exact region where all of this is happening.
In addition, West Texas is remote… There’s almost nobody around to object to these massive projects. The permit fights and lawsuits I noted in my data-center backlash coverage mostly happen where data centers crowd against suburbs.
Out past Pecos and Abilene, the nearest angry neighbor might be a herd of cattle.
It’s no surprise that land values out there have gone vertical. When Cactus started working this land decades ago, Whitney says, ranch land changed hands for $300 to $500 an acre. Today, AI companies are paying as much as $50,000 an acre.
Of course, TPL isn’t selling…
Instead, the company collects its surface leases, easements, and access fees… keeping its ownership of the dirt underneath. And a tech giant building a data center stuffed full of billions of dollars of chips is one of the “stickiest” long-term tenants out there.
But as big as the land story is, Whitney believes Wall Street is missing an even bigger opportunity…
A single large data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day… about the same as a city with 50,000 residents.
And dozens of these data centers are planned for West Texas…
That’s another big opportunity for TPL. Over the years, it has built one of the largest water operations in the Permian Basin.
Oil drillers were TPL’s original customers. Every fracked well needs massive volumes of water to get the oil out. And now, data centers are lining up for access, too.
That helped TPL’s water sales volumes cross 1 million barrels per day earlier this year, for the first time in the company’s history.
And one man was focused on water long before most on Wall Street…
Remember that Eric Schmidt deal we mentioned earlier? As Whitney puts it in his documentary:
As part of the joint venture, America’s Greatest Retirement Stock holds the right of first refusal to supply water to every project built through the partnership.
In other words, Schmidt agreed to make this company his water supplier – for every facility he builds.
Even Schmidt himself called out this company’s “abundant water” as one of the key reasons he made this $150 million bet.
Mark my words: Within 24 months, Wall Street analysts will be valuing the water business of America’s Greatest Retirement Stock alone at billions of dollars. Right now, most of them barely mention it.
Already, TPL’s water business – through water sales and produced water royalties – made up nearly half of its revenue in its latest fiscal year. And it’s growing fast.
The chart below from the company’s recent investor presentation compares its net income for its land and resource operations with its water business…
The kind of repricing that Whitney is expecting can move TPL stock massively.
And of course, we still haven’t gotten to the company’s true focus…
TPL’s vast acreage is in the Permian Basin, where ExxonMobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX) run some of their largest operations. So when those oil majors pull crude oil from under TPL’s land, the company collects a royalty on every barrel.
It’s one of the world’s best businesses…
While an oil producer has to spend millions on drilling holes and hiring crews, a royalty business like TPL that owns the land just collects a check. That makes royalties one of the cleanest hedges for inflation, rising energy prices, and a falling dollar.
But Whitney believes TPL’s oil royalties are only part of the story now… and that its natural gas income stream is about to surge.
AI data centers require electricity on a scale the American power grid simply cannot deliver. Whitney’s presentation puts the average wait to connect a large new facility to the grid at more than eight years. That’s not a realistic time frame for hyperscalers trying to win the AI race.
My colleagues and I have been tracking that same bottleneck across our research network for the past year. As I wrote in my “Dark Energy” guide to the AI power crunch:
The U.S. power grid can’t keep up with AI’s electricity demands.
Mainstream publications like the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have called the current U.S. grid “archaic” with “onerous and outdated” regulation and years of underinvestment.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”), the body responsible for ensuring grid reliability, has warned of growing risks of widespread blackouts. The Department of Energy is also projecting sharp increases in blackout risk by 2030.
So, to power its data centers, Big Tech companies have stopped waiting and started building their own power plants… typically fueled by natural gas.
In Texas alone, natural gas power projects in development will add nearly 58 gigawatts of new generating capacity. For comparison, that’s more than the annual peak demand of the entire state of California. And most of that new capacity – 40 gigawatts’ worth – was specifically planned to power data centers.
And this summer, the biggest behind-the-meter deal yet landed right in TPL country.
My colleague Nick Koziol detailed the agreement shortly after it was signed:
Project Kilby is expected to consume about 2.7 gigawatts (“GW”) of power. According to CNBC, that’s enough power to fuel more than 2 million homes. Construction hasn’t started just yet. The data center is expected to start receiving power in 2028.
Chevron has a large footprint in the Permian Basin in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico. This allows it to quickly and efficiently supply power to Texas data centers like Project Kilby, says Jeff Gustavson, Chevron’s president of New Energies, in a statement announcing the deal.
Follow the money on this kind of deal, and you can watch TPL cash in on every single one of its four main royalty streams…
And its customers are some of the richest corporations on Earth, spending money at a pace investors couldn’t have imagined just a few years ago. Whitney puts it like this in his exclusive presentation:
In nearly 20 years of running a hedge-fund firm, I’ve analyzed thousands of businesses. I have never seen anything like this one.
It has no debt… nearly $500 million in annual free cash flow… more than 60 cents of every revenue dollar converted into net profit… and remarkably low operating expenses – because this company doesn’t drill, doesn’t build, and doesn’t lay pipe.
It makes deals and turns those assets into cash.
You don’t have to guess which AI company wins. You don’t have to pick the best oil driller, either. You can simply buy TPL and enjoy its regular royalty stream as the AI race grows more frenetic.
Of course, while TPL is a great way to play this trend over the long term, Whitney also points to potentially much bigger gains to be made in the short term, too…
Now, the one commonality across TPL’s royalty streams is that they’re largely focused on hard assets… land, oil, natural gas, water.
Commodities.
And right now, Whitney believes we may be at the beginning of the biggest commodity supercycle of our lifetimes.
His presentation charts more than 100 years of commodity prices against the stock market and identifies four prior stretches when hard assets became radically undervalued compared with the stock market… 1929… the late 1960s… the late 1990s… and now. (Click here to read the transcript from Whitney’s briefing – this link does not go to a long video.)
In each cycle, he says, the best resource investments handed early buyers gains of 500%, 1,000%, or more… even as ordinary stocks stagnated.
Take the late 1960s and early 1970s…
By his figures, silver exploded 3,000% in the following decade, gold soared 2,300%, and oil climbed 1,000%… while the S&P 500 went nowhere for 10 straight years.
And today, commodities are currently trading near the cheapest levels of the past century. Whitney charted out 120 years of commodity prices with the stock market in his presentation:
Why is this supercycle kicking off right now? Whitney points to three specific catalysts:
First, a decade of starved supply has sent prices higher. Mining exploration budgets have collapsed about 40% from their 2012 peak, and oil and gas capital spending has fallen from $900 billion in 2014 to $570 billion in 2025.
Second, demand is exploding, courtesy of the AI build-out we covered above. Every data center needs massive amounts of electricity, copper, steel, and fuel.
Finally, the dollar itself is under pressure. Gold has been shattering records as central banks swap Treasury bonds for bullion, a trend Whitney notes has topped 1,000 tonnes of official annual gold purchases for three consecutive years.
When paper money weakens, hard assets tend to rise. And TPL may be the hardest asset of them all… land that gets paid royalties from oil, gas, and water… located smack-dab in the one place America’s biggest companies are spending trillions.
Whitney believes commodities are the single best thing you can own in the world today.
And he has the credentials to back up that claim…
After leaving the hedge-fund world, Whitney moved into investment research and education and now heads a team of analysts at one of the largest independent financial publishers in the world.
There, he shares his highest-upside opportunities with tens of thousands of subscribers… including at least five paid-up billionaires.
And of course, Whitney is offering a full 30-day money-back guarantee for all new subscribers. So you can give his research a try without a long-term commitment today.
Or, if you’d prefer to skip a long video, click here to get immediate access by going directly to the Commodity Supercycles order page.
The post Eric Schmidt Bet $150 Million on This Stock. Whitney Tilson Predicts It’ll Beat Berkshire, Apple, and Amazon Combined. appeared first on MarketWise.
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