10 Liquid Bank Stocks With Highest Dividend Yields

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Amid a time of uncertainty for the largest U.S. banks, grappling with a regulatory and political onslaught, TheStreet has identified the 10 actively traded bank stocks with the highest dividend yields, all of which are much smaller than the national players dominating the headlines.

The new list follows TheStreet's much more conservative list of 10 Bank Dividends with Room to Rise, which limited the group to banks paying out a relatively low percentage of earnings over the past five quarters.

In order to come up with this new list of 10 actively traded bank stocks with the highest dividend payouts, we excluded names traded on the Pink Sheets and those with average daily trading volume below 50,000 shares.

Only two of the names appear on both the "conservative" bank dividend stock list and this new list.

Some of these stocks have performed well over the past year, although most have not. When considering this group, it's important to keep your investment objective in mind. If you are looking for income, some of these names have very attractive dividend yields, especially in the prolonged low-rate environment. Then you need to consider how likely it is for the company's earnings to sustain the dividend, while also building or maintaining sufficient capital to keep operating in a stable manner.

None of these 10 holding companies owe bailout funds to the government.

For investors more focused on growth, several of these names have achieved real earnings improvement over the past year and for most of the group, analysts are expecting continued improvement in operating performance this year and in 2012.

All data was provided by SNL Financial. Here are the 10 actively traded bank stocks with the highest dividend yields:

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