Dividends are more than just quarterly reminders that your stock investments care about you. In fact, those payouts are about even more than just the personal enrichment through pocket change. When a company raises its yield, it's a good indication that things are improving fundamentally for that company. Why would it open up the purse strings even wider if that were not the case? So follow the hikers. See where they take you as an investor.
Let's take a closer look at four of the companies that inched their payouts higher this past week.
US Bancorp
Following suit, PG&E
Eli Lilly
Then we have Spartech
Subscribers to our Income Investor newsletter can appreciate the companies sending more and more money to their investors. Analyst Mathew Emmert has often singled out companies that are committed to growing their distributions with market-thumping results.
Want to see what Mathew likes these days? Go ahead and give his newsletter service a shot with a 30-day trial subscription. Who knows? Maybe the next thing to get hiked will be your interest.
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Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz pays attention to yield signs. He does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. The Fool has a disclosure policy. He is also part of theRule Breakersnewsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.