Ask Matt: Who unfailingly pays dividends?

Q: What stocks unfailingly pay dividends?

A: Investors are bracing for a rocky market, making the safety and security of dividends attractive.

Companies that unfailingly boost their dividend each year are rare. Only 10% of the stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 have raised their annual dividends each year for the past 25 years. The good news is it's easy to find those companies. The Dividend Aristocrat index tracks the 51 companies in the S&P 500 that have consistently boosted dividends for two and a half decades. Investors can also invest in this index with the ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats exchange-traded fund. Currently the index is yielding 2%, which is about the same as the S&P 500.

Investors looking for companies that have routinely boosted dividends - which pay a higher yield - can find them with the S&P High Yield Dividend index. This index includes stocks in the S&P 1500 index that have boosted dividends each and every of the past 20 years. Investors can invest in this index through the SPDR S&P Dividend ETF, which trades by the symbol SDY. This ETF is currently yielding 2.4%. Be careful, though, these indexes aren't as diversified as you might think. The S&P High Yield Dividend index is about quarter financials.

Paste BN markets reporter Matt Krantz answers a different reader question every weekday. To submit a question, e-mail Matt at mkrantz@usatoday.com or on Twitter @mattkrantz.