Enterprise Products Partners has a lofty 6.8% yield, backed by a reliable fee-based business.

Bank of Nova Scotia, with a 4.5% yield, is in the midst of a turnaround, and the effort is progressing well.

REIT W.P. Carey, which has a 5.5% yield, reset its business in 2023, and growth is starting to pick up again.

10 stocks we like better than Enterprise Products Partners ›

If you are underwhelmed with the S&P 500’s (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) skinny little 1.2% yield, don’t fret. There are other, higher-yielding options at your disposal. Some of the choices, like Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD), Bank of Nova Scotia (NYSE: BNS), and W.P. Carey (NYSE: WPC), not only have far more attractive yields, but those yields are also backed by attractive businesses.

Here’s why you might want to jump on this high-yield trio in December.

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When most investors think of an energy stock, they likely think about volatile oil prices. That’s not a mistake; the energy sector can be highly volatile.

However, Enterprise Products Partners actually operates in the least volatile niche of the energy sector, the midstream. It owns energy infrastructure assets, and its customers pay fees for the use of those assets. The price of energy is less important than the demand for energy, which is high most of the time, given the importance of energy to the modern world.

So when you look at this master limited partnership’s (MLP’s) huge 6.8% yield, you shouldn’t dismiss the income opportunity it represents. Not only is that yield backed by a reliable business model, but the distribution has been increased annually for 27 consecutive years.

Enterprise also has an investment-grade-rated balance sheet. And its distributable cash flow covers the distribution by roughly 1.7x, so there’s a lot of room for adversity before a distribution cut would be in the cards.

If you like boring income stocks, you’ll find North American midstream giant Enterprise Products Partners attractive, even though it operates in the highly volatile energy patch.

If a slow and boring dividend stock isn’t your speed, you might want to consider the low-risk turnaround story that backs Bank of Nova Scotia’s lofty 4.5% yield. This Canadian banking giant has paid a dividend every year since 1833, which is closing in on an incredible 200 years. Very clearly, being a reliable dividend stock is important to the company.

Still, even reliable dividend stocks go through difficult periods. Scotiabank, as the company is more commonly known, got off track as it sought out growth in Central and South America. It was looking to differentiate itself from its Canadian peers, most of which opted to focus on growth in the United States. Scotiabank’s approach didn’t work out as well as hoped, so it is shifting gears. That has some investors worried about the future, given that the change was spurred by laggard financial results.