The Long and Short of Profitable Dividend Yield Strategies

Abstract

High dividend yield stocks appeal to many investors, but their value-like characteristics raise concerns about payout sustainability and firm distress risk. We address this concern by forming portfolios comprising stocks that have high gross profitability and high dividend yield. The resultant “combo” strategies inherit the defensive qualities of high yield stocks in bad times while underperforming the market portfolio only modestly in good times. Averaged across market cycles, combo strategies exhibit low volatility and high Sharpe ratios reminiscent of “good deal” investments (Cochrane and Saa-Requejo [2000]). Comprehensive evidence shows that the high returns of such combo strategies are driven by the underpricing of low-risk stocks and the same behavior forces that underlie the well-known beta anomaly. These deep-seated forces suggest that the combo approach will continue to work well in the future.