Index funds are not only a long-proven way to invest in the equities markets: The indexes these funds replicate serve as standard benchmarks for measuring performance. Take the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF , for instance.
While it's not unusual for managed funds and paid stock pickers to trail the performance of passive index stocks, individual investors also have good choices among equities with records of outperforming those benchmarks. The two I'll highlight here are both real estate investment trusts (REITs): Agree Realty (NYSE: ADC) and Blackstone Mortgage Trust (NYSE: BXMT) . REITs hold pools of income-producing assets and carry the obligation of paying at least 90% of their annual taxable income to shareholders in the form of dividends.
Agree and Blackstone are very different companies, though. For starters, Agree is an equity REIT that owns real estate directly while Blackstone is a mortgage REIT (mREIT) that owns loans. But the two do share this: they both have significantly outperformed the Dow for years.
For further details see:
2 REITs That Are Outperforming the Dow Jones
