It was brought to our attention today that the dividend yield on the S&P 500 now exceeds the yield on the 10-year Treasury notes.  Sam Stovall, Chief Investment Strategist from Standard & Poor's, cites in his "Stovall's Sector Watch" from The Outlook that this doesn't happen very often.  In fact, since 1953, there have only been 20 occurrences when the S&P 500 yielded more than T-Notes.  The current indicated dividend yield for the S&P 500 is 2.13%, according to Stovall. He further goes on to say, that the following 12 months, after this occurrence, the S&P 500 rose by an average of +20%.

In the image below, we show a graph of both the S&P 500 dividend yield, and the yield of the 10-Year Treasuries.  The source used for this shows the SPX yield at 2.15%, while the T-Note yield is 1.88%.  Although this differs from Stovall's yield, the point is still the same -- that the SPX yield is now above the T-Notes.  As well, the last time we witnessed this change take place was back in March 2009, and the S&P 500 rose 20% in the following year.  In all, the historical tendency for equities to move to the upside after this cross is certainly worth noting today.  One way to play this yield opportunity in the S&P 500 universe is through the SPDR S&P Dividend ETF (SDY), which currently yields 3.6%.  The year-to-date return for this ETF is -8.04% while the S&P 500 is down -9.94%.