How Can I Find Out Which Stocks Pay Dividends?

A dividend is a distribution of a portion of a company's earnings paid to its shareholders. Dividends can be issued as cash payments, as shares of stock, or other property. There are several accessible sources to help investors identify dividend-paying stocks. Below we've listed a number of resources that can help you determine which stocks pay dividends.

Financial News Sites and Apps

You can find many options available on the Internet—such as financial news sites and aggregators—that provide top-notch data, tools, and analysis for investors. Whether getting a quote on an individual stock to finding specific information about a company's current dividend yield or checking out a screener to find out the highest-paying dividends in an industry, you can quickly use these (often) free resources to track down the information you need.

Sites like CNBC, Morningstar, The Wall Street Journal, and Investopedia are all great resources available for researching dividend data. For example, on Investopedia's Markets Today page, you can use the stock search tool to enter the company name or ticker symbol that you're researching. You'll be taken to a page that includes that company's stock chart, company profile, and fundamental data. Here you'll see if the company pays dividends. You'll find information about the dividend yield, the amount of dividend paid for the year, and dividends per share.

Brokerage Accounts

Many individual stock brokerage accounts provide online research and pricing information to their customers. Similar to the news sites, investors can easily find information on dividend amounts and payout dates, as well as other types of peer comparisons and screeners. An additional benefit for users of online accounts provided by a broker is the ability to tie into any current (or past) holdings from portfolios that are dividend-payers and generate additional types of personalized reports and analysis.

Securities and Exchange Commission

All publicly-traded companies are required by law to report on Form 1099 all dividends they have paid to investors during the previous tax year on a quarterly and annual basis. As a result, you can research these filings on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's website using their EDGAR system. You can also quickly research a company’s financial information and operations by reviewing reports filed on Forms 10-K and 10-Q.

Specialty Providers

There are a number of dividend-focused specialty resources available online for getting comprehensive information on dividends. Some of these sites are free, some have paid subscription content, and some have a combination of free and paid content. With these specialty providers, you might have access to a calendar of upcoming ex-dividend dates, as well as screeners, tools, and rankings. The Value Line Investment Survey provides a number of services to help investors select dividend stocks.

The Stock Exchanges

Tools and resources are also provided from the stock exchanges themselves to keep investors up-to-date with dividend data for the companies they list. The NASDAQ provides a dividend calendar, history tool, and screeners on the highest-yielding stocks. Meanwhile, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) provides a historical database to research ex-dividend dates by a selected date range.