Over the past three and a half years, the dominant U.S. equity themes have been tech, growth, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence (AI). Whether you look at performance or investment flows, it seems to be all anybody wants right now.

That means that a lot of themes that have traditionally worked quite well in the past are largely being ignored right now. One of those themes is dividend-paying stocks. Since the 1940s, dividends have accounted for about one-third of the S&P 500‘s (^GSPC +0.22%) total return. That’s very easy to overlook, since tech stocks have been driving returns and the S&P 500’s current yield of 1.05% is an all-time low.

But being overshadowed doesn’t suddenly make dividend investing a subpar strategy. Dividend…