Why I'm Loading Up on These 3 High-Dividend ETFs for Passive Income

After a fig of years of accordant underperformance, dividend ETFs are demonstrating erstwhile again wherefore they beryllium successful a portfolio.

This year, portion the S&P 500 is virtually level and the tech assemblage sits successful the red, the WisdomTree U.S. Total Dividend ETF, which could beryllium considered a wide benchmark for the dividend banal universe, is up astir 6% (as of 2/12/26).

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High-yield strategies person mostly done adjacent better. Not lone are income investors enjoying immoderate long-overdue superior maturation from their dividend portfolios, but they're besides capable to seizure 3%-4% yields, and sometimes more, connected the side.

We're inactive little than 2 months into 2026, but this inclination has sustained agelong capable that it feels similar it could widen good into the remainder of the year. That means there's inactive an accidental to seizure not conscionable the stock terms upside but the large income watercourse arsenic well.

Depending connected your preference, present are 3 high-dividend ETFs that look primed for the adjacent respective months and beyond.

The Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF (NYSEMKT: VYM) tracks the FTSE High Dividend Yield Index. It starts with a wide beingness of U.S. dividend-paying stocks, calculates the expected dividend output implicit the upcoming 12 months, and selects the apical fractional of yields for inclusion successful the portfolio. The extremity effect gets marketplace cap-weighted. It presently yields 2.3%.

This ETF doesn't person a terribly targeted oregon robust strategy erstwhile it comes to gathering a high-yield banal portfolio. But if your extremity is simply to usage a broadly diversified and comparatively low-risk mode to seizure a precocious yield, the Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF tin bash that.

There's nary unsafe effort to propulsion the hazard illustration to amended yield. The money holds much than 500 antithetic stocks, truthful there's nary large attraction risk. The 0.04% disbursal ratio is 1 of the cheapest you'll find anyplace successful this category.

I'd reason that determination are amended ways to people high-yield stocks. But for a no-frills enactment to elevate your yield, this money does the job.

The Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF (NYSEMKT: SCHD) follows the show of the Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 Index. It's 1 of the fewer ETFs that considers dividend growth, dividend quality, and precocious output successful its enactment process.

The last portfolio selects the 100 stocks that show the champion operation of each factors (REITs are excluded) and past weights them by marketplace cap. It presently yields 3.4%.