The Top Dividend Stocks of the Week

Here's something we don't see every week at Stockpickr: Three of the stocks that turned up on our Top Dividend-Raisers of the Week sport single-letter ticker symbols.

It is extremely difficult for a publicly traded company to get a one-letter stock symbol, almost as difficult as trying to buy a one-letter Web domain name. The three one-letter-ticker companies that increased their dividends last week are Realty Income(O Quote), which upped its monthly payment by 0.5%; Qwest Communications(Q Quote), which reinstated its quarterly dividend; and AT&T(T Quote), which raised its quarterly dividend by 12.7%.

One of the biggest dividend-raisers last week was Franklin Resources(BEN Quote). This large family of mutual funds increased its quarterly dividend by 33% to 20 cents a share. The company just reported preliminary month-end assets under management of $647 billion, up from $541.6 billion for the same month last year. The stock has a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 16, a P/E-to-growth (PEG) ratio of 1.2 and a yield of 0.5%. ...