What makes a dividend stock a good fit for a retirement portfolio? The answer is that it must have a healthy yield and it must be less risky, or volatile, than the average market.
It's for these reasons that McDonald's (MCD 0.51%) and ExxonMobil (XOM 4.00%) fit the bill. In McDonald's case, it yields 3.1% and has a beta of 0.34, meaning that it's 66% less volatile than the overall market. And in Exxon's case, it yields 2.7% and has a beta of 0.92.
Both of these stocks, in other words, yield more than the 10-Year Treasury -- which currently pays 2.61% -- while being less volatile than the general equities market. As Motley Fool contributor John Maxfield explains in the following video, these are the exact qualities that most retirees desire for stocks in their portfolio.
