Prediction: This Will Be the First Dividend Champion from the "Magnificent Seven"

• Microsoft has the longest streak of dividend increases -- and a two-year caput commencement connected runner-up Apple.

• Keep successful caput that Microsoft and Apple person antithetic preferred methods of rewarding shareholders.

• Both person stumbled successful dividend payouts this century, but lone 1 has resumed them with a vengeance.

• 10 stocks we similar amended than Microsoft ›

Tech giants person a well-earned estimation for paying stingy dividends. Nvidia, contempt being the largest institution successful the satellite by marketplace capitalization, pays a dividend of conscionable $0.01 per share, amounting to a output of conscionable 0.02%. Meta Platforms lone started paying a dividend 2 years ago, oregon a twelve years aft shares went public, and present offers a 0.32% yield, portion Alphabet's first-ever dividend, announced months aft Meta's, present pays $0.26%. Tesla and Amazon shares inactive wage thing astatine all.

Income isn't everything, and these stocks whitethorn proceed to reward shareholders massively successful the years ahead, particularly considering the historical stock repurchase programs that respective of them person announced, which are another, and usually much tax-efficient, mode to instrumentality worth to shareholders.

Yet since 1960, 85% of the wealthiness generated by the banal marketplace has travel from reinvested dividends and compounding, according to probe by Hartford Funds. For semipermanent investors, the opportunities from serial dividend-growers are excessively almighty to ignore.

Yet there's nary question that these 7 companies, termed the Magnificent Seven by expert Michael Hartnett, person led the mode higher successful this banal marketplace rally driven by enthusiasm astir the $15.7 trillion artificial quality (AI) revolution.

For investors seeking some a mode to pat into the historical question of disruption, and besides to cod increasing and reliable income, the lone existent candidates are Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). And 1 intelligibly outshines the other.

Dividend Champions, oregon stocks that person grown payouts astatine slightest erstwhile a twelvemonth for 25 years oregon longer, are battle-tested businesses. Every Dividend Champion contiguous has raised payouts passim the 2008-2009 fiscal crisis, the COVID-19 lockdowns, the illness of the dot-com bubble and the Nasdaq Composite's consequent 77% crash, and the question of ostentation successful 2022 that reached 41-year highs.

Yet contempt their dominance and adjacent their property (Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Apple each went nationalist decades ago), nary Magnificent Seven banal has ever claimed the title. In precisely 10 years, I foretell that volition change. Since 2010, Microsoft has been ramping up its dividend. After a intermission the twelvemonth before, it raised its dividend by 23%, and hasn't looked backmost since. Since 2010, it's raised its dividend by 600%, and present pays shareholders $6.6 cardinal successful dividends each quarter.