A year ago dividend paying stocks were significantly outperforming the nonpayers in the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 500 Index itself. If investors were chasing performance back then and loading up on the payers, today they would be disappointed. Below is a chart of the year to date performance of two dividend paying exchange traded funds, SPDR Dividend ETF (SDY) and iShares Select Dividend ETF (DVY). The return of the dividend focused ETFs is nearly half that of the S&P 500 Index. The return difference is similar for one year. My year ago post contains some details on both ETFs.

Below is S&P Dow Jones Indices' average return summary for the payers and non-payers in the S&P 500 Index as of July 31. The return difference is not as large as noted above due to ETF construction differences, for example, not using all 420 dividend paying stocks in the S&P 500 Index.

Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices

The fact the dividend payers are underperforming the non-payers as well as the broader S&P 500 Index itself, seems to be further confirmation of investors seeming to favor growth oriented stocks over value ones.