Want $300 in Monthly Dividend Income? Invest $41,800 in These High-Yield Stocks

Although there are a lot of ways to make money on Wall Street, buying dividend stocks is one of the smartest. Nine years ago, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, a division of money-center giant JPMorgan Chase, issued a report comparing the performance of publicly traded companies that paid dividends to those that didn't over a four-decade stretch (1972 to 2012). The income stocks averaged an annual return of 9.5% over four decades, while the non-dividend payers crawled to an average annual gain of just 1.6% over the same period.