Blistering interest rates, a hot economy, high inflation, recession fears, artificial-intelligence hype and an equity market rebound is how we’ve started 2023.
We used beta to identify our low-volatility stocks; it measures how much the stock moves in relation to the general market. We limited the list to companies that have a beta of less than one, which implies they are less volatile than the market. We sorted stocks from least to most volatile based on this metric.
Dividend payout ratio is the dividend payment divided by earnings per share. A lower number is preferred and may hint that there is room for future dividend increases. We’ve also capped payout at 100 per cent, as we wanted to focus on reliable dividends and anything above that could signal the potential for a cut.