AGNC Investment (NASDAQ: AGNC) currently pays a monster dividend each month. The $0.12 per share monthly payment puts its annualized dividend yield at 15.6% based on its recent stock price. That's over 10 times the S&P 500's dividend yield (1.4%).

A double-digit dividend yield can signal trouble, sometimes suggesting that the market believes a cut is coming soon. Those concerns were part of the discussion on the mortgage REIT's recent first-quarter conference call. Here's a look at the key metric the company pointed toward when discussing the dividend's safety.

An analyst on AGNC Investment's first-quarter call asked the REIT's management team about their comfort level with the dividend, given its current return on equity (ROE) breakeven level. That metric looks at what the company needs to earn on its investments to cover its operating expenses and dividends, common and preferred.

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Source Fool.com