Dividend Yield: 15.9%
Market Cap: $1.2 billion

Och-Ziff Capital Management (OZM) is a publicly traded hedge fund and investment manager. The bull market has been very kind to this stock in the past year or so, and the results show in its bottom line.

In its latest earnings report in February, Och-Ziff said its assets ballooned by $500 million in the past six weeks with a total of $24 billion under management as of Feb. 1. The company's just paid a 58-cent quarterly dividend on Feb. 18 to shareholders of record on Dec. 31, and shows no sign of a cut anytime soon.

Dividends are an often overlooked but crucial part of a successful retirement strategy. These quarterly offerings can provide a regular "paycheck" for retirees -- especially when the company is a high-yielding blue chip with a track record of boosting its dividend year after year.

But dividends don't just have to be a quiet way to grow your nest egg. They can really supercharge your returns when you buy into a great stock that also happens to be cash-rich. On top of the appreciation you see in your shares, you'll also get a great bonus checked mailed four times a year -- or more, depending on the dividend schedule.

Och-Ziff Capital Management, an asset manager currently in the process of becoming public, seems to be "weathering the storm," according to DealBook. According to recently-filed paperwork related to the IPO, recent issues facing hedge funds (volatility spike, subprime issues, etc.) "have not materially impacted our funds' performance."

This leads me to believe that the funds were either bearish/uninvolved with subprime or they were long subprime but those losses were easily balanced out by some other positions' gains. Either way, the important thing is that the firm's funds are alive to trade another day unlike numerous Bear Stearns funds, Sowood, and so on.

It's refreshing to see the media finally covering some positive hedge fund headlines. I'm aware of many other hedge funds that are still up 6-8% net on the year. As I've said in an earlier post, there are two sides to every trade and, as a result, for every fund that is 'killed' by something like subprime there is another fund that is prospering due to the panic.