Hartford Financial Services Group Shares Cross 2% Yield Mark

According to Dividend Channel, in trading on Friday, shares of Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. (HIG) were yielding above the 2% mark based on its quarterly dividend (annualized to $0.40), with the stock changing hands as low as $19.88 on the day. Dividends are particularly important for investors to consider, because historically speaking dividends have provided a considerable share of the stock market's total return. To illustrate, suppose for example you purchased shares of the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) back on 12/31/1998 ? you would have paid $123.31 per share. Fast forward to 12/31/2010 and each share was worth $125.75 on that date, a mere $2.44 or 2% increase over all those years. But now consider that you collected a whopping $20.53 per share in dividends over the same period, increasing your return to 18.6%. Even with dividends reinvested, that only amounts to an average annual total return of about 1.4%; so by comparison collecting a yield above 2% would appear considerably attractive if that yield is sustainable. Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. (HIG) is an S&P 500 company, giving it special status as one of the large-cap companies making up the S&P 500 Index.

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