3 Top Dividend Stocks to Buy Right Now -- With Dividend Yields Above 5%

The article highlights three dividend-focused stocks: Realty Income (REIT) with a 5.1% dividend yield and 673 consecutive dividend-payment months, plus Comcast (CMCSA) with a 5.6% yield and an asserted ~13% total shareholder yield after buybacks (despite recent average annual losses of 12% over five years) and Verizon (VZ) with a 6.6% dividend yield from 20 straight years of dividend increases. It also points to potential catalysts—Comcast’s planned NBCUniversal spin-off to refocus on broadband/cable cash flow and Verizon’s plan to spin off its international enterprise business into a BT joint venture—framing the outlook as more supportive than recent performance suggests.

Analysis

This is less a stock-picking note than a rates-and-capital-allocation screen. For O, the real variable is not the cash yield itself but whether declining financing costs can outrun modest lease-growth and acquisition cap-rate pressure; if real yields stay sticky, the multiple stays capped even if the dividend remains intact. In that sense, the name is more a duration proxy than a classic defensive compounder.

CMCSA is the highest-variance setup because any restructuring only helps if it narrows the conglomerate discount faster than it removes internal cross-subsidy. The market will care more about post-separation leverage, buyback capacity, and broadband net adds than about the narrative of simplification; if cable pricing weakens or fixed wireless keeps taking share, the spin can become a value trap rather than a catalyst.

VZ looks like the cleaner income asset: less narrative risk, more visible free-cash-flow cover, and better defensiveness if growth slows. The consensus mistake is equating yield with safety across all three names; the better filter is refinancing risk plus operating momentum. Over the next 1-3 months, rates and guidance will drive relative performance; over 6-18 months, the winners will be the names that can keep dividends while still funding network investment and buybacks.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Prefer long VZ versus CMCSA on a 1-3 month horizon: VZ has the cleaner cash-flow profile and less execution risk; CMCSA needs the spin to materially improve the equity story, which is a higher bar than the current yield implies.
• Avoid chasing O at current levels if the 10Y Treasury remains elevated; treat it as a rate-sensitive income trade, not a secular growth compounder. Best entry is on rate spikes or a reset in REIT valuations, not after dividend-yield headlines.
• If holding CMCSA, hedge with a short in a cable/telecom proxy basket or reduce beta via a long VZ/short CMCSA pair; the risk is that the spin is multiple-neutral while the core cable business continues to de-rate.
• Use VZ as the defensive income expression versus higher-yield but higher-execution-risk names; monitor post-quarter capex guidance and wireless pricing for falsification. If free-cash-flow guidance slips, the thesis weakens quickly.
• Watch for a 25-50 bp move lower in long rates as the catalyst for a broader rerating in O and other yield proxies; absent that, this is mostly a carry trade with limited multiple expansion.