BURBANK, CA - FEBRUARY 01: An Exxon gas station advertises its gas prices on February 1, 2008 in ... [+] Burbank, California. Exxon Mobil Corp. has posted an annual profit of $40.6 billion, the largest ever by a US company, and set a new US record for the highest quarterly profit, $11.7 billion for the last three months of 2007. The previous annual profit record, $39.5 billion, was set by Exxon in 2006. The company's revenue also rose 30 percent in the fourth quarter, from $90 billion a year ago to $116.6 billion. Yearly sales were up from $377.64 billion in 2006 to a new company record of $404.5 billion. Exxon was particularly benefited by historic crude prices at the end of the year. Exxon Mobil is the world?s largest publicly traded oil company. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

Attention, growth investors. A quick stock market question for you.

(Dividend people, you are welcome to play, too.)

Take a quick peek at the chart below. The lines are revenue gains over the past twelve months for four stocks.

Three of them are top holdings in AR AR Innovation ETF (ARKK ARKK ). The fourth, well, is a contrarian special that careful readers already know (Hint)

Which sales curve would you want to own?

Did you peek at the key? Of course you did. Well, were you surprised that Exxon Mobil (XOM) was running laps around these three laggards?

ARKK fan people, we told you so. In these pages, 13 months ago, we said that XOM’s 6.1% dividend had 61% upside.

Darn it, we were off a bit! Since that column, XOM has dished us 95% total returns (including dividends). Take that, tech darlings!

There’s more to this stock than just a pretty top line, too. As income investors, we ask a company to treat their money like it’s ours. In 2020, XOM demonstrated how good it is at protecting our interests.

The price of oil crashed a year ago and barrels were trading hands at negative prices. Negative! This means people were paying others to take oil off their hands.

Yet somehow, some way, XOM paid its dividend—without a blip or mortgaging the firm’s future. It aced the ultimate payout stress test.

Will ZM, SQ and CRSP RSP pass their exams? The Federal Reserve officially begins to taper its balance sheet today. It has a $9 trillion pile of “funny money” to whittle down to help tame inflation.

This is bad for tech stocks. They tend to rely on easy money and low interest rates, both of which are “over” for the moment.

The stocks we picked on above have been duly crushed. I’m sure you have friends who owned ARKK. We all do. Please be nice—and let them know where they can find better investing advice!

There’s still plenty of time to get in on this “dividend trade of the decade.” The rally in energy payers has been a long time coming.

The oil bear market from 2014 to 2020 set up this move. During that time, energy producers underinvested in new supply. They were just trying to hang on and continue making their dividend payments. Smaller firms especially had to preserve cash to stay in business!

Even the great XOM stopped hiking its payout in 2019. Its debt levels ballooned in 2020. But help was on the way in the form of a “crash ‘n rally” oil pattern:

This time last year, we were in “phase four.” crude oil prices headed higher and XOM the company benefitted massively. It smartly used some of the cash to pay down the formerly ballooning debt. a sign that the firm had turned the corner. Despite all this, the stock was dirt cheap! Your dividend guy had to share this with you!

We are now in “phase five” of the current crash and rally pattern. Oil demand is still ahead of supply and likely to stay that way for many more years, perhaps until the end of the decade. Remember, this sector has been underinvested in since 2014. You don’t turn around eight years of that on a dime.

We’ve made the fast money on XOM, but the real money is likely still to come. Don’t give up early on these energy dividends. They very well could be the trade of the 2020s.

Brett Owens is chief investment strategist for Contrarian Outlook. For more great income ideas, get your free copy his latest special report: Your Early Retirement Portfolio: Huge Dividends—Every Month—Forever.