Leo Sun, The Motley Fool
5 min read
With the 10-Year Treasury now hovering near 4.8%, many income-seeking investors will likely be tempted to sell their dividend stocks and buy low-risk T-bills instead. That might seem like the prudent move, but Treasuries tend to underperform stocks over the long run.
If you invest $1,000 in a 10-Year T-bill today at 4.8%, that investment will predictably grow to $1,480 when it matures. But if you invest that $1,000 in the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) — and assume it will maintain its historical annual growth rate of 10% — that investment will have blossomed to about $2,640 with reinvested dividends.
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Therefore, if you can afford to lock up your cash in long-term Treasuries, it still makes more sense to park your cash in dividend stocks and tune out the near-term noise. If market downturns make you queasy but you still want stable dividends, consider these two high-yield stocks: ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) and Brookfield Renewable (NYSE: BEPC).
ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil is one of the world’s largest integrated energy companies. It owns upstream, downstream, and midstream assets in over 56 countries. It gets most of its oil from the Permian Basin in the United States. Still, it’s been expanding its presence in Guyana (one of the world’s fastest-growing oil regions) and increasing its oil production in Asia and Africa. It’s more exposed to the volatile Middle East than some of its peers, but it offsets that pressure with its growth in other regions and the expansion of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) business.
ExxonMobil plans to increase its oil and gas production by nearly 3% annually through 2030. Thanks to its scale, it only needs the price of Brent crude oil — which is currently at $92 per barrel — to stay above $35 per barrel to comfortably cover its capex and dividends.
That’s why ExxonMobil has raised its dividend annually for 43 consecutive years, and why it could easily extend that streak to 50 years to become a Dividend King. Its EPS briefly turned negative in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, but rose from $5.39 in 2021 to $6.70 in 2025.
Those profits covered its dividends, which increased from $3.48 in 2020 to $4.00 in 2025. It currently pays a forward yield of 2.5%, and it has plenty of room to raise that payout. It trades at just 15 times forward earnings, making it a cheap play in a frothy market.
