Dividend payments have become a hallmark of most larger American stocks. More than 80 percent of the stocks in the large-cap S&P 500 index now pay a dividend. But they're rapidly becoming more popular among smaller issues as well.
As of the end of the year, a full 68 percent of the companies in the mid-cap S&P 400 offered dividends. Not only that, but more than half of the small-cap companies - 53 percent - in the S&P 600 Index provided dividends.
The drop in oil prices has provided another bit of good news for dividend owners. Nine of the top ten S&P 500 dividend payers are energy or telecommunications stocks, as companies try to reassure their shareholders with regular payouts. The highest dividend on the S&P 500 now belongs to the deepwater driller Transocean, which is paying out a whopping 19.57 percent - but whose share price has dropped almost 50 percent in the past three months.
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