Published on 6 Dec 2023 on Zacks via Yahoo Finance

Focus on These 5 Stocks That Recently Hiked Dividends

Wall Street has managed to give investors positive returns so far this year. The Dow, the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy NASDAQ have given 9%, 19% and 36% returns, respectively, over the year-to-date period. Investors’ confidence recovered as inflation in the United States showed a favorable trend in the past couple of months, thus raising hopes that the Federal Reserve may ease its monetary policy outlook in the near future.

The consumer price index (CPI) for the month of October remains unchanged from the previous month at 0.4% on a seasonally adjusted basis. For 12 months through October, CPI climbed 3.2% after rising 3.7% in September before seasonal adjustment. The annual rise in underlying inflation for the month of October was marked the smallest in the past two years.

According to the reports published by the Labor Department on Dec 5, 2023, job openings for the month of October decreased to 8.7 million, the lowest since March 20021. Although job openings fell dramatically, the total number of hires and total separations changed little at 5.9 million and 5.6 million, respectively.