Dividend income is often overlooked amid gyrations in the stock market. Consider that in 2024, market bulls were boasting about 24%-plus S&P 500 returns. No one was very focused on the broad market index's 1.2% dividend yield. But dividends are an important element of return, and 2025 for a while was bearing that out. Through May, the S&P 500 was up a thin 1.1%; without dividends, there was essentially no returns at all. Of note, dividend income accounted for 42% of the total return of the S&P 500 between 1930 and 2012, according to Hartford Funds. And that's just the average. In some of those decades, dividends accounted for more than 50% of total returns and even 100%. More recently, dividends have accounted for a smaller portion of returns, at around 15%-20%. But not all dividends are created equal, though, and it is important to understand the difference between the two main investment categories: high-yield stocks and dividend-growth stocks.

Raymond James Financial Inc. is a diversified financial services company. The company's businesses provide capital markets, asset management, private client, banking, and other services to individuals, corporations, and municipalities. The company was founded in 1962 and went public in 1983. RJF has over 8,900 advisers in the U.S. and total client assets of over $1.7 trillion. It is headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Earnings season is in full swing, a time when insider-transaction volume always slows because of trading restrictions that are in place for corporate executives, directors, and beneficial owners. While that typically results in 'weak' volume-deprived insider-sentiment readings, we note that the major stock indices are also at or near all-time highs. And investors of all stripes, insiders included, are known to take money off the table when the stocks they own have never been so valuable. End of day, there are viable explanations for insider-sentiment data that is less than stellar, as is the case now. Looking at the weekly data from Vickers Stock Research, the NYSE One-Week Sell/Buy Ratio is now 8.38; the same ratio for the Nasdaq is 8.91; and the Total (all exchanges) ratio is 8.68. Those readings are on a scale where any result above 6.00 is bearish. But based on the above offsets, we are far from suggesting that the sky is likely to fall. Drilling down to sector sell/buy ratios, four sectors recorded bullish one-week sell/buy ratios over the past week, while two recorded bearish sentiment. Communication Services, Healthcare, Real Estate, and Utility were all bullish during the period, while Information Technology and Materials were bearish. While volume was light across most sectors, this was not the case for Information Technology, where 174 transactions resulted in a particularly high (bearish) sell/buy ratio of 173.0. Zooming out, six sectors recorded a bullish eight-week sell/buy ratio, including Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, Financial, Healthcare, Industrial, and Real Estate, while Communication Services, Energy, and Information Technology were bearish. This week, analysts at Vickers highlighted insider transactions of interest at United Rentals Inc. (NYSE: URI) and PriceSmart Inc. (NGS: PSMT).

Raymond James Financial is a diversified financial services firm that provides wealth management, investment banking, asset management, and capital markets services to individuals, corporations, and municipalities. The firm maintains an extensive catalogue of products and services across its business lines. However, the wealth management franchise generates the bulk of its revenues and earnings through a vast network of more than 8,900 independent and employee-affiliated advisors, who collectively managed over $1.7 trillion in client assets as of fiscal year-end 2025. While Raymond James maintains a global footprint, the company derives over 90% of its revenue and an even larger percentage of its operating income, from the United States.