Firms increasing their dividends in 2020, of all years, are sending a powerful “payout confidence” signal to Wall Street: Our dividend is safe—so secure, in fact, that we’re hiking it. Watch our stock price follow. The bigger the increase, the greater the level of confidence. In a minute, we’ll investigate five of these dividend buy signals. S&P Dow Jones Indices’ Howard Silverblatt writes that there were 309 dividend increases during the third quarter, versus 102 declines—better than the 244 versus 639 “upside-down” split from Q2. (Though we’re still grading worse than this quarter last year, when 426 firms raised and only 94 cut.)… Read more