Do you prefer stocks that pay part of their returns in dividends? Many investors rely on dividend stocks as a source of reliable income. For a closer look at dividend-yielding names, we ran a screen.

Keeping reliability in mind, we started by screening for dividend stocks with strong liquidity, measured by current ratios above 3. The current ratio is current assets/current liabilities, and it measures a company's liquidity. This is important for dividend stocks because a company can use their sources of liquidity to continue paying their dividends in the event that their profits drop.

We also screened for stocks paying dividend yields above 1% and sustainable payout ratios below 50%.

We then screened for those stocks with bullish smart money sentiment, with significant decreases in shares shorted month over month.

Business section: Investing ideas
Here below are the stocks that resulted from this screen. These dividend names have strong liquidity and bullish sentiment from short-sellers.

Do you think these names pay strong dividends? (Click here to access free, interactive tools to analyze these ideas.)

1. Advance America, Cash Advance Centers (NYSE: AEA): Provides cash advance services in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Market cap at $655.42M.Dividend yield at 2.39%, payout ratio at 23.06%. Current ratio at 4.67. Shares shorted have decreased from 6.13M to 2.59M over the last month, a decrease which represents about 6.8% of the company's float of 52.04M shares.

2. GNC (NYSE: GNC): Operates as a specialty retailer of health and wellness products. Market cap at $3.68B.Dividend yield at 1.27%, payout ratio at 0.15%. Current ratio at 3.06. Shares shorted have decreased from 5.65M to 4.53M over the last month, a decrease which represents about 1.25% of the company's float of 89.33M shares.

3. InterDigital (Nasdaq: IDCC): Engages in the design and development of digital wireless technology solutions. Market cap at $1.61B.Dividend yield at 1.12%, payout ratio at 20.34%. Current ratio at 4.44. Shares shorted have decreased from 6.04M to 5.47M over the last month, a decrease which represents about 1.37% of the company's float of 41.62M shares.

Interactive Chart: Press Play to compare changes in analyst ratings over the last two years for the stocks mentioned above. Analyst ratings sourced from Zacks Investment Research.


Kapitall's Alexander Crawford does not own any of the shares mentioned above. Short data sourced from Yahoo! Finance.