The Kiplinger Dividend 15: Our Favorite Dividend-Paying Stocks

Income investors love dividend stocks for their regular payouts; any stock-price appreciation is just gravy. The Kiplinger Dividend 15, the list of our favorite dividend-paying stocks, delivers on the first front, yielding 3.4%, on average, compared with a 1.9% yield for Standard & Poor's 500-stock index and a 1.7% yield for the 10-year Treasury bond. What's more, over the past year, our list has slathered on the gravy, too, returning 13.6%, on average, counting dividends and price appreciation, compared with a 4.3% return for the S&P 500.

Big gains don't come without some strings attached. Like many stocks that have ridden this record-long bull market, some of the names on our list appear to be richly valued now. And although dividends buttress returns when a stock's price slides, pricey stocks could take a big hit in the event of a stock market plunge. Perhaps more salient for dividend investors, major boosts in the share price diminish a stock's yield, as is the case with Blackstone Group and Realty Income--two stocks originally chosen for our list because, among other things, they historically provided yields above 4%. Although they've slipped below that bar, we're not yet ready to jettison them for performing too well, and we