5 Dividend Stocks Ready to Pay You More Cash

WINDERMERE, Fla. (Stockpickr) -- Ben Bernanke did a lot of winking and elbow nudging last Friday, not-so-subtly tipping investors to the possibility that QE3 may be on the way. At some point. Eventually.

Investors have been voracious about QE3 for the past several months, working themselves into a tizzy over the possibility that the Fed would start dumping more cash into the market. I'm not so sure that Bernanke's speech in Jackson Hole wasn't just lip service. But for dividend investors, the implications of another round of easing are big.

Already, treasury rates are near zero at the same time that inflation is getting pegged above 2.2%. If retail investors' QE3 dreams come true, it'll mean that inflation creeps higher while interest rates remain near all-time lows.

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So what's a tired income investor to do? Why, just step in front of another round of dividend hikes, of course.

Today, we're scouring the stock market for a new group of big-name stocks that look ready to hike their dividend payouts in the coming quarter. In other words, these five firms are getting ready to boost dividends; they just don't know it yet.

In the past few months we've had some stellar success in finding future dividend hikes just by zeroing in on a few key factors. Now we'll look at our crystal ball and try to do it again.

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For our purposes, that "crystal ball" is composed of a few factors: namely a solid balance sheet, a low payout ratio, and a history of dividend hikes. While those items don't guarantee dividend announcements in the next month or three, they do dramatically increase the odds that management will hike their cash payouts, especially as investors start to get antsy about this mid-2012 rally.

Without further ado, here's a look at five stocks that could be about to increase their dividend payments in the next quarter.

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