" By now it’s fair to ask: Who cares? Nvidia has spent massively on stock buybacks—although not enough to meaningfully reduce its share count. More importantly, the S&P 500 has returned 278% over the past decade, beating the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats, a subset of companies with many years of raising payments, by more than 100 points. But that is partly to do with recent valuation bloat. The S&P 500 has plumped up to 25 times projected earnings from 19 times three years ago. If you invested in the Aristocrats index at inception just over 20 years ago, and checked three years ago, you would have made 402%, and beaten the S&P 500 by 80 points.

That’s no anomaly. From 1973 through the end of last year, companies that grew or initiated dividends returned an average of 10.2% a year, versus 4.3% for nonpayers and negative returns for dividend cutters and quitters, according to data compiled by Hartford Funds. Since 1960, dividends have contributed 85% of the S&P 500’s total returns, such is the long-term power of compounding."

barrons.com - Nvidia tiny dividend reflects broader stock market trend