What ETF's are great for a typical dividend investor?

Oldman answered one year ago …

You're at the wrong info site for that type of questions, since that site has both CEF's (many of which are active and managed dividend producers at the expense of the NAV), and the ETF's don'tt have a policy of what % will be paid.

The site to use is SeekingAlpha.com/ETF's and in the keyword search box at the top right-hand corner, type in
Dividends

Then you'll get a listing of all the topics concerning this issue. The ETF's that hold the typical dividend-paying stocks, Utility sector, Financial Sector, Transportation sector, are one's that pay dividends through to the shareholders. In addition, there are bond ETFs that hold sovereign debt of Developed and of emerging market countries (BWX and PCY, respectively) and there are rotating yield ETFs , which quarterly change the sector or country mix for the largest dividends.

For closed-end funds, the Alpine-sponsored AOD, AGD, pay high dividends, most of which are tax-qualified, by following a "dividend capture" strategy of holding the securities for the requisite 60 days around the dividend date. JSN is another dividend-paying closed-end fund from Nuveen. All these closed-end funds have had significant decreases in their NAV's due to credit problems in the underlying holdings, and more importantly, some may no longer be trading at a large discount to the NAV.

Buy the CEF's when they trade at a SIGNIFICANT discount to the NAV...which is info that IS available at ETFConnect. But to rank order the dividend payers, also go to ClosedEndFund.com, (the home of the Closed-End Fund Association) where you can sort and compare about 6 funds at a time, based upon "income" yield vs "market" yield.

Be careful to note that the expense ratios on some of the closed end funds can be > 2%, which is much more than any ETF's. A reasonable expense is below 1.5%.

Also, see if there is a history of adding additional shares in the CEF, which can dilute, or decrease the holdings' NAV.

If you want a list of companies that have raised their dividends - for example, for 10 or 20+ years, that's also available at Seeking Alpha, and at Morningstar. But the listing is under the grouping of "Dividend Paying" stocks...and then you'd have to select the ETF that contains those companies...and surprise, surprise...the ETF's only yield 2.5 to 4 %, because those companies have very high share valuations currently.