The stock market had a good day today. The S&P has gained 1.63% and moderated its year-to-date losses to 19%. That rally has pushed the index up just out of bear territory.
Despite these gains, at least one major bear believes that the index hasn’t bottomed out yet. Mike Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s chief US equity strategist, sees more room for the index to fall, and predicts that the S&P will hit its low point somewhere between 3,000 and 3,200 – a drop that would mean another 20% loss for stocks. As for when, Wilson says, “We don’t know if it’s going to be this quarter or next quarter, but it’s probably some time in that timeframe.”
At the same time, Wilson won’t tell investors to abandon stocks. Morgan Stanley is taking a dual approach to equities, buying into companies that are still bringing in operating profits and cash flows despite a turbulent environment. “You shouldn’t abandon stocks,” he says, “there’s plenty of individual names that probably are extremely attractive.”
In these market conditions, two ‘extremely attractive’ attributes are share outperformance plus a high-yield dividend. With this in mind, we’ve used the TipRanks database to find two dividend stocks that are offering high yields of about 8%, and even better, both significantly outperformed the market this year — highlighting their defensive strength in the current volatile environment.
Coterra Energy (CTRA)
We’ll start with Coterra Energy, an exploration and production company in the North American oil and gas industry. Coterra has a profitable network of operations, in some of the continent’s richest, most productive oil and gas formations, including famed Marcellus shale of Pennsylvania and the Permian Basin of Texas, as well as Oklahoma’s Anadarko Basin. Coterra holds more than 593,000 net acres of land and land rights in these formations, and controls proven reserves in the range of 514 million barrels of oil equivalent.
This general position has, in the past year, generated solid profits and earnings for Coterra. The company’s last quarterly…
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