Top 10 Dividend Stocks of the Week

When a company pays a dividend , it's rewarding its shareholders, and when it raises its dividend, it's creating long-term faith in its future business. While some companies have consistently raised their dividends for years, some publicly traded firms are new to the game.

Stockpickr has evaluated the list of companies that have raised their dividends in the past week and sorted them by yield in the Top Dividend-Raisers by Yield portfolio.

At the bottom of the list is Texas Instruments(TXN Quote), which last week increased its quarterly dividend by 25% to 10 cents a share. Texas Instruments also provided another reward to its investors by announcing a $5 billion share-buyback plan.

This plan brings its total buyback commitment to $20 billion since September 2004. There has been a 17% reduction in shares from the buybacks as of the end of the first half of the year. The stock has a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 21 and a P/E-to-growth ratio of 1.1.

Texas Instruments is one of the recommendations of Ken Fisher, noted Forbes columnist, author and manager of some $30 billion in assets. Some of Fisher's other picks include Credit Suisse(CS Quote), with a yield of 2.3%, China Mobile(CHL Quote), which yields 1.4%, and United Technologies(UTX Quote), which pays 1.6%.