LIVE MARKETS-Cash-return stocks win back investor favor, leaving megacaps behind

Shares of companies using cash for dividends and buybacks are winning across sectors, said Dan Lefkovitz, an indexes strategist at Morningstar, including in technology, where legacy firms such as Cisco, Dell and Texas Instruments are having "monster years."

Cisco and Texas Instruments offer dividend yields of 1.56% and 2.18% respectively, while Dell offers 0.45%, according to LSEG data.

Technology firms have contributed to over 15% of the Dividend and Buyback index's growth so far this year, the report published on September 9 showed.

Dell has surged four-fold in 2026, making it the third-best-performing stock on the S&P 500, trailing only data storage firm Sandisk and Moderna, which have jumped seven-fold and five-fold, respectively.

Companies that prioritize returning cash to shareholders through dividends and buybacks are back in favor with investors this year in a reversal from the past two years, according to a report from Morningstar.

The firm says that its Dividend and Buyback index, which is heavily weighted towards high-yielding sectors such as financial services, energy stocks and consumer defensive companies, gained over 31% from the start of the year through August.

That has comfortably outperformed Morningstar's US Total Market Index, which is up about 14% for the same period. The last time it beat the broad market was in 2022, Morningstar said.

The S&P High Yield Dividend index has climbed about 9.6% so far this year, already on pace for its best performance since 2021. State Street's SPDR S&P Dividend ETF tracking this index has jumped 10%.

Among market-leading megacap companies, Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft, with their yearly gains between 2% and 23%, have underperformed the high-yielding stocks.