7 Dividend Hikes In 7 Days

With interest rates around the world dipping into negative territory and U.S. Treasury rates at all-time lows, stock dividends may be the best alternative for investors being choked by lower fixed-income yields. In the past seven days, seven companies have upped their appeal to dividend investors by officially raising their payouts:

• 7/7/16- Paychex, Inc. PAYX raised its dividend 10 percent to $0.46.
• 7/7/16- Enterprise Products Partners L.P. EPD raised its quarterly dividend 5.3 percent to $0.40.
• 7/7/16- PNC Financial Services Group Inc PNC raised its quarterly dividend 8 percent to $0.55.
• 7/13/16- Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc WBA raised its quarterly dividend 4.2 percent to $0.375.
• 7/13/16- Lakeland Financial Corporation LKFN raised its quarterly dividend 14% to $0.28.
• 7/13/16- Home Federal Bancorp Inc of Louisiana HFBL raised its quarterly dividend 12.5 percent to $0.09.
• 7/13/16- J M Smucker Co SJM raised its quarterly dividend 12 percent to $0.75.

Related Link: 'Chicken Bulls' Are Driving This Bull Market

In addition to the dividend hikes mentioned above, most of the big banks that submitted CCAR plans were approved for hikes.

Incredibly, the current 10-year U.S. Treasury yield is only around 1.5 percent, while the dividend yield for the S&P 500 is over 2.0 percent.

So far this year, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY is up 6.1 percent, while the iShares Barclays 7-10 Year Trasry Bnd Fd IEF is up 6.3 percent.

Disclosure: the author holds no position in the stocks mentioned.