Dividend Aristocrats is the trademarked name that Standard & Poors uses for its list of companies that have raised dividends annually for 25 years or more. Needless to say, being able to not only part with cash, but a growing amount of cash, every year for the past quarter-century is an incredible accomplishment and is often a hallmark of the best businesses that have also outperformed the S&P 500 Index.
As a bit of a research project, I reviewed the histories of over 20 companies that are considered Dividend Aristocrats to determine both their long-term total returns and the number of years in which these stocks underperformed the S&P 500.
As you can see, even the best of companies spend a fair amount of time underperforming the index. If you were a holder of Colgate-Palmolive, which is one of the twenty best stocks you could have purchased in the entire … Read the rest of this article!