Highest dividend?

The "highest" or "highest and safest" ??

New Century was yielding like 30% right before subprime happened....and we all know where they landed.
 
The highest "real" ones I've found:

Siliconware (SPIL). Before Thursday's crash, it was around 14%. At the current price, it's almost 20%. It almost seems too good to be true, but I haven't been able to find a single thing anywhere online disputing that it's legit and real.

Williams Pipeline Partnership (WMZ). "Only" 10%, but unless there's something lurking in the shadows I'm not aware of (and if there is, I'd really like someone to point it out before I go nuts buying it), this company looks pretty solid. No debt, healthy revenue. Their stock price itself is pretty flat (it went from ~$20 in April to ~$13 last week, with an all-time low of ~$10.50 in October), but with dividends like that, their long-term share price is almost irrelevant. Check out the graph of their stock price over the past week. Thursday & Friday's crash barely made a dent in it. When the price went down, its owners mostly just dug in and quit selling.

BP is pretty tasty at the moment. "Only" ~7.5% dividend, but their stock price is unusually cheap at the moment because it's a British company, and the Pound is pretty low compared to the Dollar right now (compare their price to XOM and CEO to see the difference the exchange rate can make)

I'm fond of Maxim (MXIM). Their dividends aren't shockingly high, but they're still pretty high, and this is another company with no debt and abundant cash reserves. It's also one of the few companies in an industry that I actually understand (they make some REALLY cool mixed-signal ICs that are about as close as you can get to single-chip solutions with nothing besides a few passive external components that aren't cost-effective to put on-die, like capacitors).

Verizon (VZ) is another company that's been reliably stuffing dividend cash into my bank account for years.

Pfizer (PFE) looks good, too. If stocks crash in December, it's near the top of my list of companies to buy into ;-)
 
Just to add, the highest dividend I've ever seen that seemed to be sustainable was ~20%, and THAT was mostly because the stock price itself fell and doubled what USED to be a ~10% dividend. If you're an Ameritrade customer, make sure you look at the "Financial Strength -> Dividends" tab for any company you're considering. Every single one that the stock screener found with a dividend above 20% ended up being described as "unsustainable".
 
One has to wonder if the only 'safe' dividend play in the current market is to try and collar the position so you can collect the dividend while protecting your downside on the underlying. That's what I did for many of my "high yielders" in my long-term retirement account...which sure made me sleep better at night!

Speaking of dividends, does anyone here "harvest" dividends?
 
One question... if you take advantage of DRIP and get issued fractional shares, does each new fractional share get added to your existing fractional share (if you have one), and replace it with a new "whole" share plus a fractional share with the remainder anytime the two add up to 1 or more? Or after a few years, do you end up with dozens of fractional shares that can't be individually traded without closing your entire position?
 
 
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