The Dividend Blind Spot Costing Income Investors Thousands—Here's What Most Screeners Miss

You’re scrolling through Google Finance or Yahoo Finance, checking the latest performance charts. Everything looks straightforward enough. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: those free tools you trust every single day are showing you only half the picture—and that missing half could be costing you tens of thousands in returns.

This isn’t a small oversight. It affects every high-yielding investment, and the higher the yield, the more devastating this blind spot becomes. For closed-end fund (CEFs) investors, this single mistake can make you dismiss an outstanding performer as a dud.

When a Fund Outperforms Yet Looks Like It’s Failing

Consider the BlackRock Science and Technology Trust (BST), a CEF managed by the world’s largest asset manager. It holds the big names you’d expect: Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), NVIDIA (NVDA). The fund yields 7.5%, and by any measure should deliver solid long-term performance.

But look at the price chart alone over the past decade, and you’ll see something puzzling: BST’s market price has climbed 130.4%. Yet when you compare it to the S&P 500 Index—a benchmark with less tech exposure than BST—the fund appears to have underperformed dramatically. The orange line (S&P 500) runs circles around the purple line (BST).

Most investors would see that chart and click away. They’d conclude the fund is underperforming and move on. That conclusion would be wrong.

The Hidden 408.5% Story Behind the Numbers

Here’s where that free screener is failing you: It’s showing you market-price returns only. It’s ignoring total returns.

The difference is simple but consequential. A market-price return measures only the change in the fund’s stock price from one period to another. Total return captures that plus every dividend paid, reinvested on each payment date.

For most stocks, this distinction barely matters. NVIDIA yields 0.02%, Apple yields 0.4%, Mastercard (MA) yields 0.6%. Their dividends are so tiny that screening tools skip total returns altogether.

CEFs operate under a fundamentally different model. These funds are designed to distribute most of their returns as cash payouts. The average CEF currently yields 8.9%—eight times more than the average S&P 500 stock. When you look only at price appreciation, you’re missing the entire income story.

So what does the full picture show? BST’s total return over the past decade: 408.5%. When compared side-by-side with the S&P 500’s total return, BST crushes the benchmark. An investor who put $10,000 into BST in 2016 would have realized $40,850 in profit—more than triple the $13,040 that the price-only chart suggested.

Why This Matters More Than Ever Heading Into 2026

As we enter a new year, dividend income is increasingly attractive to investors seeking reliable cash flow. The irony? The tools most people use to research dividend investments are systematically hiding the full performance picture.

CEFs represent one of the most misunderstood income vehicles precisely because of this screener limitation. Investors see a fund like BST and assume it’s underperforming—when the reality is that the performance data they’re viewing is fundamentally incomplete.

The monthly-paying CEFs earning 9.3% on average across the market right now face this same bias. Their total returns—driven by high dividend payouts—often far exceed what their price charts alone would suggest. These funds provide the kind of consistent income stream that turns a portfolio into a genuine cash-generation machine.

When you factor in both price appreciation and dividend reinvestment, the story changes entirely. What looked like a mediocre performer becomes a legitimate market-beater. And what appeared to be a reasonable yield becomes the key to a far more substantial long-term return.

The lesson for 2026? Don’t let free screeners make your investment decisions. Dig deeper, look at total returns, and understand the difference between what you see on the surface and what’s actually happening with your money.