The Top 10 High Yield Dividend Stocks for 2026!

Right at the beginning of 2026 over on dividendology.com I released an article titled the top 10 high yield stocks for 2026 and this actually ended up becoming my most popular article ever. The reality is that with the market being just as volatile as ever, investors are looking for opportunities in high yield stocks to generate massive amounts of income and most likely ultimately retire on dividends. But the reality is that high yield investing can be very dangerous. It's like playing the game mind sweeper. There's mines all around you. So, you have to be very selective when choosing high yield stocks. But at the exact same time, there's some serious advantages to high yield investing, such as the fact that high yield stocks typically get very limited analyst coverage. And so, as a result, there's market inefficiencies that lead to opportunities to buy high yield stocks that also have capital appreciation potential. But with us now being halfway through the year, we need to revisit and see how did these top 10 high yield stocks at the beginning of 2026 actually perform. so far. Have they been able to sustain their dividends? Has their share price come crashing down? In this video, we're going to revisit the investment thesis for every single stock on this list, evaluate how it's performed, and the sustainability of their distributions, and ultimately decide if any of these are still opportunities in today's market. And like always, there's a link to dividend.com in the description down below if you aren't already subscribed. It's where I put out my best research. I'll be updating this list in the future, so be sure to sign up so that you don't miss it because spoiler alert, this list did very well. So, let's go ahead and dive in. And the very first stock that was listed on this article was Energy Transfer. Now, Energy Transfer is a midstream MLP, and it's done so well in 2026. The price gain is over 22% and the total return is closing in on 27%. So, this one has outperformed the market by a wide margin. And again, you can see essentially all that growth really started right at the beginning of this year. Now, what's interesting is at the beginning of this year as well, you can see the distribution yield or the dividend yield, whatever you want to call it, for a mid-stream stock was quite high. In fact, it was the highest it had been in quite some time with the exception of a brief period in late 2023. The stock was yielding over 8%. Now, typically, when we're talking about a 8% stock, it means the market is flashing a warning sign. At least that's what a lot of people seem to tell us. But that's not always the case, and it's certainly not the case for Energy Transfer. Now, after the runup in the share price, obviously the yield has gone down, but it's still a high yielding position. It's about 6.72%. So, a couple of questions. Are their distribution sustainable? I mean, there were investors adding it at an over 8% yield. Well, we have to remember this is an MLP and there's a few things we need to assess when deciding whether or not those distributions are sustainable. And really the first place we should look is the distributable cash flow per share that they're producing. This is essentially what the dividends are paid out of. And unlike REITs and BDC's, they're not required by law to pay out 90% of their taxable earnings in the form of a dividend. So naturally, they can have more distribution coverage. And that's exactly the case for energy transfer. You can see distributable cash flow per share in 2025 was about $2.38 while their dividend paid out was just $1.34. So this is very strong dividend coverage. And with distributable cash flow per share growing and projected to continue to grow at a healthy rate, they can continue to grow distributions at a healthy rate. In fact, that's what they've already continued to do so far this year. You can see one of the notes I have is that they've already had three quarterly raises in 2026. This was their 19th straight quarterly dividend hike. So, not only would you be getting a high yield position, you're also getting a stock that is growing its dividends every single quarter. So, while those quarterly hikes are small, maybe around 1 to 2%, it really starts to add up and boost your yield on cost over time. Now, historically, one of the complaints I've had about energy stocks in particular, and you already know this if you've watched the channel, is how sensitive they can be to oil prices. And oil has undoubtedly been extremely volatile so far in 2026. I knew it'd be volatile. I didn't know it would be this volatile. But here's what's beautiful about Energy Transfer and most MLPs in general. The vast majority of the earnings that Energy Transfer produces comes from fees. It's fee income. Now, this is very important because this means it's not reliant on movements in commodity pricing. So, naturally, the end result is their cash flows are much more stable than most oil stocks. And you can see this when looking at their historical distributable cash flow per share. It makes the dividends much stronger. And not to mention, they have one of the strongest balance sheet in the MLP space. Now, that being said, the valuation has moved slightly higher as you might suspect over the last year as the share price has grown, but it's still not trading at an unreasonable valuation. If we look at enterprise value to EBITDO, earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortization, they're sitting at about 8.64x, 64x while the 3-year average is about 8.13 and the 5-year average is about 8. So, a little bit higher than they've historically traded, but keep in mind you're getting a very sustainable 6.7% yield and your yield on cost is going to continue to grow. So, this pick so far this year has done unbelievably well. Let's assess the next pick. And that next pick is none other than Vichy Properties, one of the more popular REITs out there. Now, real quick before we dive into Vichy Properties and what's happened over the last year, I'm going to be interviewing the CEO, Ed Patoniac, here in the next few days. So, if you have any questions for him, be sure to leave a comment down below. But Vichi is down slightly so far this year with a total return of -3.2%. So, naturally, what's happened is the starting yield has gone even higher. It was yielding around 6.4% at the start of the year, and it's now yielding around 6.8%. And if we look at the last 5 years for Vichy Properties in particular, it's been very choppy. But with the recent pullback over the last year, it's trading at its lowest prices in the last 5 years. Now, naturally, REIT data is really difficult to track. Most softwares don't do a good job of showing the in-depth data you need to properly analyze them. So, what I do over on dividendology.com is I compile data every single month on REITs. And there's a couple of things we have to take into consideration. If we zoom out, you can get a picture of what this actually looks like. But we want to pay close attention to what's going on specifically with Vichy Properties right now to get a little bit of background with the fundamental performance of the REIT. Now, we already know 3-month change, one-year change, it doesn't look pretty, but what's interesting about that is adjusted funds from operations on a per share basis, which is the ultimate driver for REITs, has continued to climb higher. They have 7% CAGER whether you look at it on a 3, five, or 7-year time period. and it's projected to continue to grow at a healthy rate from 2026 to 2029. So naturally, if this is growing, then they should be able to grow the dividend along with it. So theoretically, all of a sudden, we're talking about a REIT yielding around 6.8% that has the ability to grow distributions. And their current AFO payout ratio is very reasonable for a REIT. So if you purely look at fundamentals, Vichy looks quite interesting right now. They're trading at their lowest valuation multiple in the last 5 years, and the dividend looks safe and looks like it should grow. So, there's a couple of things we have to take into consideration. Obviously, the vast majority of their tenants are located in Las Vegas. So, there is some geographical risk. Las Vegas tourism did take a dip in 2025, but it has somewhat stabilized so far in 2026. And then at the exact same time, Caesar's regional properties, which experienced temporary weakness driven by unusually low hold rates, which basically means casinos kept less of what was wagered. Mathematically speaking, that won't happen often. Now ultimately despite both of these issues as Vichi has continued to collect rent which at the end of the day is all that matters for them. So I think the next six months will be very telling for Vichy properties and again let me know if you have any questions for the CEO when I interview him in the next few days. The eighth position on the list was infrastructure capital equity income ETF IAP. So we have our first option income more specifically covered call ETF on this list. Now, these are very unique funds because the vast majority of them are designed by nature to actually underperform their underlying holding. But IAP is an incredibly unique fund. The way it's designed is it actually has outperformance potential. And I'll show you in just a moment how that's actually possible. But what we can see is total return so far year-to- date has been quite strong, particularly for a double-digit yielding fund. The total return has been about 7%. Now, what we can see is it was yielding over 10% at the start of the year and around 10.5% right now. What's really unique about this is typically if that's the case, if the yield is higher for these covered call ETFs, it means the share price has declined. But take note of this. Look at the dividend history for IAP. One of the things that makes them very unique is the fact it actually grows the distributions over time. Now, how is that possible? Well, it's possible when the net asset value is growing over time because they're writing options on the underlying holdings. If the net asset value continues to grow, they can generate more premium from their option writing, which they can then distribute to shareholders. Now, something that confuses a lot of people is the fact the expense ratio shows around 3.19%. That's not technically accurate. The management fee is about 0.8%. The expense ratio has to include some of the borrowing cost, which are relatively low that the fund uses. Now, the reason IAP is able to actually grow its net asset value. Besides the fact that they're very selective with the companies they put in their fund is they don't run 100% portfolio options coverage like most covered call ETFs. Instead, they only write options on around 30 to 40% of the portfolio. So, naturally, it leaves a significant amount of upside uncapped. They can pay out very stable dividends like we just saw, which is incredibly rare for these ETFs, and of course, grow their dividend payouts over time. And ultimately, their investment process is relatively similar to what I've preached for years on the channel. We're looking for stocks with positive and growing earnings and free cash flow. They're looking for consistent dividends with manageable payout ratios, companies that can continue to grow those dividends over time. And then, of course, we want them to be trading at reasonable valuation levels. And then they write options on the underlying holdings that they believe in the portfolio are already fully valued so that writing covered calls on them doesn't limit the upside of the fund. This is what gives him outperformance opportunities. I typically speak with the fund manager once a quarter to get updates on his fund IAP and any of the other funds that he runs. Next on our list, we have Aries Capital Corporation. And spoiler alert, this is the only BDC on this list. And BDC's have had a very difficult past year. In fact, if we look at the VANC BDC Income ETF, BIZD, which just holds a conglomeration of BDC's, it's down over 23% in the last year and year to date, down by nearly 13%. So, the BDC space has really struggled in 2025 and 2026. Now, that being said, Aries Capital Corporation hasn't been immune to this, but they are only down on a total return basis of about 3.5%. Now, there's a couple of interesting things happening with Aries Capital right now. To start, do make note when we look at the distributions, they've completely maintained their distributions during this time period. Very important to note that. So, that's obviously important if you're a high yield investor. But on top of this, for the first time in a while now, they're actually trading below a 1.0 price to tangible book value per share. So, basically, investors are paying 97 cents for every $1 of ARC's tangible net assets. Historically speaking, investors have typically paid a premium. And now trading at these valuation levels, we're talking about a BDC that yields over 10%. Now remember, BDC's are essentially a portfolio of loans. So again, another high yield asset class that's difficult to analyze with traditional softwares. So again, over on dividendology.com, I have a database that I update every single month with the key data for these funds. So if we pull up their BDC database, we can see Aries Capital Corporation right here. The key metric we want to look for right here, base dividend coverage. Right now, their dividend is completely covered by the net investment income that Aries Capital Corporation is generating. Keep in mind that's certainly not the case for a lot of BDC's in the BDC universe. Now, keep in mind when we talk about BDC's, one of the concerns that the market has is the BDC's having exposure in their loan portfolios to software stocks, obviously because of the threat of AI. And right now, ARC, Aries Capital Corporation, has about 24% of their portfolio exposed to the software sector. So, while Aries Capital Corporation, I do think is one of the higher quality BDC's on the market still, that is something to keep in mind. And then next on our list, we have Western Midstream Partners. This is another position that's done extremely well so far in 2026, and it's another midstream MLP company. So, there's quite a bit of benefits to this, just like I mentioned with Energy Transfer earlier. Now, the total return on this one is about 21.9%. So, again, another huge winner. But here's what's really interesting about this position. Yes, it's been a huge winner so far in 2026, but sentiment around this stock was actually quite low entering into 2026. In fact, what's really interesting is if we talk about Western Midstream Partners, entering into this year, they had a 9.3% distribution yield. So, naturally, what happens? Well, anytime you have a position that has a 9.3% yield, a lot of people would argue that means the market is pricing in a potential dividend cut. So, what does that mean? Well, it means if we assess the stock and find that the distribution, the dividend is sustainable, then it likely means that that position is way undervalued. And that's exactly what happened with Western Midstream Partners. They had investment grade credit. They had very low leverage on the balance sheet and a healthy dividend coverage ratio. They highlighted all of this in their earnings presentation and even stated they're targeting mid to low singledigit annual distribution increases. And on top of this, that's exactly what analysts were projecting to happen. We can see we're still seeing projections of low dividend increases that are covered by growing distributable cash flow per share. So naturally, because I felt strongly the distribution was safe, I felt like this was a great opportunity and the market would rerate the stock to where the yield drops lower to around 6, 7, or even closer to 8%. And right now it's still yielding around 7.8%. I don't think it's trading at an unreasonable valuation. We can see right here is around when we added it to the list right before the start of 2026. So the valuation multiple, the total enterprise value divided by IBIDA has definitely climbed and it's on the higher end of its historical valuation over the last 5 years, but it's still trading at a reasonable price. The next company on the list was a unique one. It was a specialized small cap REIT, a position that gets very little analyst coverage. And that's New Lake Capital Partners, stock ticker NLCP, up about 4.6% on a total return basis for the year. And what we can see is this position right now is yielding around 11%. So this is a very high yielding REIT. So again, what's the market pricing in? Is it pricing in a dividend cut? Well, there's a couple of things we have to take into consideration. What we have to understand this is a high yield rate that basically holds cannabis operators. Those are the tenants. But here's the key catalyst for this REIT. Cannabis moving towards schedule 3 status at the federal level. What does that actually mean? Well, previously it was under schedule 1, which means the tenants, the operators were unable to deduct basic business expenses resulting in effective tax rates of 60 to 80%. And obviously that's going to severely constrain profitability. But what we've seen so far in 2026 is cannabis moving to schedule 3. So naturally, what happens is the tenant credit quality improves significantly, which ultimately was the primary risk for New Lake Capital Partners. So what we're finding out is their tenants are getting in a healthier position. We're seeing this happen throughout 2026. And at the exact same time, they had around an 82% AFO payout ratio, which remember that's the payout ratio you should look at for REITs. And they also have a net cash position on the balance sheet. Incredibly rare for REITs. So right now we can see the dividend is covered. It's covered by adjusted funds from operation. If they can simply maintain their current dividend, there is significant upside for this REIT. That's pretty much the case anytime you have a position yielding close to 11%. And just look at the valuation multiple trading at about a 8.1 price to AFO per share. So a very interesting position. It's done a good job maintaining its distribution so far this year. And if they can continue to do that, I think this one still has a lot of upside. Coming in at number four, we have another fund, a covered call ETF, and it's a very popular one, the NEOS S&P 500 highinccome ETF. So basically, you probably understand how this fund operates, but if you don't, listen closely. Again, this is a covered call ETF. The starting yield over the trailing 12 months is about 12%. Now, this fund has amassed nearly 11 billion now in assets under management. And I can point to a few different reasons why. Yes, this fund writes options on the underlying S&P 500. So, the share price upside is going to be limited, but it's going to make most of the distributions in the form of a dividend. And one of the things this fund does very well is it has relatively stable distributions for a fund that is essentially writing options on the entirety of the portfolio. So again, if we jump back over to dividendology.com, let's go to the database and look at the covered call ETF database. We'll scroll down and find the NEOS funds and we can see Spyi right here. So let's zoom in and look at a few of the key metrics. If we scroll all the way over, two key metrics you need to pay close attention to the option moneyiness. What type of strategy are they using? And the portfolio options coverage. Typically, portfolio options coverage for this fund is going to be closer to 100%. So naturally what that means is yes they're giving up a little more of the upside but they're doing it in effort to produce a 12% yield and maintain those distributions. Now on top of this they use out of the money calls. What does that mean? Well typically you're going to see at the money or in the money calls but they're using out of the money calls. Naturally it's going to produce lower premiums but it also allows some of the upside and it's better in bullish markets. Now, that type of strategy makes a lot of sense when you consider the underlying holding is the S&P 500, which throughout history has continued to climb higher. So, even when we saw SPYI take a dip because the S&P 500 take a dip, the fund was able to recover. It took part in the upside and continued to climb higher to new 52- week highs. If a covered call ETF is too aggressive, a lot of the times when we see the net asset value decline, because funds are using a covered call strategy that limits the upside, sometimes the fund never recovers. But but so far SPYI has continually done exactly that. Now the next stock on the list has been one of the most controversial over the last year and that's AHRT. That's formerly Armada Hoffler Properties but they just rebranded to AH Realy Trust. So the previous stock ticker was AH again. Now it's AHRT. Keep that in mind. But so far this year it's done well. It's outperformed the market up by about 9% and at the beginning of this year the starting yield was around 8.5%. So this is an incredibly unique case study. You need to understand a few different things about this REIT before we really dive into the fundamentals. Before they went through a fundamental change, it was a very unique REIT. It operated a development first model where it would build highquality mixeduse multif family office and retail assets and then selectively keep only the best properties as long-term holdings. And those holdings had around 95% occupancy. However, look at the share price. Look how bad they've done over the past 5 years. down by 46.13%. Now, if you know me, typically I like to avoid stocks that have dividend cuts because when we're talking about building a high yield portfolio, obviously something that's of the utmost important is the sustainability of the distributions. So, why did this stock make it on the list? Well, Armada Hoffler Properties or AHRT has undergone a huge fundamental shift. They've even changed CEOs. So, what they're doing is they're moving away from volatile feebased construction income. They're prioritizing recurring property level cash flows, deleveraging the balance sheet because they certainly were overleveraged, and then focusing on fewer better assets rather than growth for growth's sake. So, here's a really great chart because what we can see is previously Q4 of 2024, the dividend was not covered by adjusted funds from operation, but after the strategic shift, after the dividend cut, we can see the dividend is now covered. Perhaps more even importantly though, management noted that the dividend is fully covered by just rental income alone and not development fees. So, they're doing exactly what they stated they were aiming to do. Now, to be fair, 2026 has been a wild ride. We can see the stock continued to plunge lower and even entered the $5.50 range, but the fundamentals as I reviewed them continued to prove it looked relatively strong. So, naturally, we saw a strong bounce back and we're in the green and they've continued to maintain that dividend. So, this is a stock I'm keeping up with very closely. It's a very unique case study, and I'll admit it's not a sleep well at night stock. You have to watch it very closely. Keep up with the quarterly updates and any comments from management. But so far, the position has done quite well in 2026. Coming in at number two, we have the fund PFFA, the Verdice Infra Preferred Stock ETF, and it's slightly in the green so far this year. And this is another big yielder. We can see right now the starting yield is around 10%. And again, just to be transparent, this is another scenario where the expense ratio is quite misleading because the leverage costs are tied into the fund. In reality, the management fee is around 0.8%. Now, if we look at the distributions from this fund, what you'll notice is they're incredibly stable and even grow slightly over time. You can see there has been some growth so far in 2026, which I always find quite impressive for a high yield fund. So, what type of fund is this? Well, it's a preferred stock ETF. Preferred stocks don't get a lot of hype. people don't like discussing them, but there are some clear advantages, particularly for high yield investors. Something a lot of people don't realize is preferred stocks have historically defaulted at a lower rate than high yield bonds. This is because preferred stock issuers are typically larger issuers with durable assets. They also get payment priority. Preferred stocks sit above common equity in the capital stack and preferred dividends must be paid out prior to common equity dividends. And then obviously there's a huge yield advantage. Preferred stocks will typically have higher yields for a similar credit quality to high yield bonds. Now, here's what's really important about this fund. It's the fact it's active management, which particularly in preferred stocks is incredibly important. Why is that the case? Well, it's because most preferred stocks are callable, meaning that issuers can redeem them when it's advantageous, forcing passive investors to reinvest at lower yields. So, you would definitely want an actively managed preferred stock fund. And this active management approach has paid off. It's outperformed its underlying index over the last 1, three, and 5 years. And then finally, the number one high yield pick going into 2026 was MLX, another midstream stock, and the total return has been strong so far this year, up 12.5%. And at the start of this year, the starting yield was sitting right at 8%. So, let's dive into this one for a moment. MLX, after the recent share price appreciation, it's still yielding around 7.5%. So, it's still a high yielder. And of course, at the end of the day, distribution sustainability is what matters most. And we can see they're easily covering their dividends with distributable cash flow per share. Again, that is the key metric for MLPS that you need to pay very close attention to. And perhaps just as important is distributable cash flow per share is projected to grow at a healthy rate over the next few years, meaning that they can continue to see dividend growth. And in fact, speaking of dividend growth, take a close look at what management recently stated. management guided for another 12.5% annual dividend growth rate over the next couple of years while keeping distribution coverage above 1.3x. 12.5% dividend growth for a stock that was yielding 8% is absolutely amazing. An incredible combination of dividend growth and yield. At the exact same time, like the other MLPS, the vast majority of its earnings are feebased, backed by long-term contracts with minimum volume commitments. So again, their cash flows aren't tied to commodity prices. So again, naturally, the valuation multiple for this stock has climbed over the last year as the share prices continue to climb higher. But to be completely transparent, I think there's potentially still a decent bit of upside with this position. And the average analyst price target seems to agree with me, which is sitting at $62.50. When you have a position that's yielding 7.5% with the potential for double-digit dividend growth and strong distribution coverage, I think that's a very attractive investment. So, when I review our top 10 list, I think these picks have done incredibly well. The total return, in fact, is in line with the tech heavy S&P 500. But the reality is, if you're designing a high yield portfolio, trying to generate the strongest total return is actually not what you should be going for. Yes, you want positive returns. That's definitely the case. But you need distribution sustainability. Why is that so important? Well, because if you think about the 4% rule to generate $40,000 a year in dividends, you need a portfolio size of $1 million. But if you can achieve a sustainable 8% yield, all of a sudden, the amount of capital you need to retire is cut in half, and you don't have to worry about sequence of return risk. So, while the goal of these stock picks wasn't to design a portfolio, these were stocks picked independently of one another. This is not a portfolio design. The reality is the total returns for these stocks and the distribution sustainability so far has been incredibly strong. I'm very happy with the performance. But what I'm even more proud of is over on dividend.com, we're actively building a real money high yield portfolio and the total returns and the average starting yield for the positions in that portfolio have been even stronger than those top 10 picks. So again, to make sure you don't miss out on any of my high yield research and dividend growth research as well, be sure to sign up for dividendology.com at the link in the description. It's where I put out my best research. I compile data, put out research on dividend growth, high yield stocks, and of course, undervalued dividend stocks as well. So again, go ahead and let me know what you think of these picks in the comments down below. And like always, please don't forget to like and subscribe to the