BALTIMORE (Stockpickr) -- The S&P 500 closed at yet another all-time high on Tuesday, even if just barely. It's the first ever close above the 2,100 level for the big index, a big psychological round-number barrier. And it means that anyone who's bought "stocks" as an asset class any time in history is sitting on gains right now. But while most investors are staying fixated on their capital gains this month, they're forgetting about something that's historically been an even bigger contributor to total returns when all is said and done. I'm talking about dividends. Dividends may matter a whole lot when markets are grating and interest rates are plummeting, but lately, they've fallen down a few pegs on investors' priority list. That's a big mistake. Over the last four decades, dividend stocks outperformed the rest of the S&P 500 by 2.5% annually, and they outperformed nonpayers by nearly 8% every year, all while paying out cash to their shareholders, according to a study from NDR. And today, U.S. stocks are paying out more money today in the form of dividends than ever before. But to find the biggest benefit from dividends, it's not enough to simply buy names with big payouts today. You've got to think about what they'll be paying tomorrow too. So instead of chasing yield, we'll try to step in front of the next round of stock payout hikes. For our purposes, that "crystal ball" is composed of a few factors: namely a solid balance sheet, 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 to shareholders. And they've helped us grab onto dividend hikes with a high success rate in the past. Without further ado, here's a look at five big stocks that could be about to increase their dividend payments in the next quarter. Think of it as your dividend preview. Must Read: Warren Buffett's Top 10 Dividend Stocks Apple I'm not saying you need to ignore capital gains to collect big dividend payouts -- just take a look at Apple . This tech behemoth grabbed headlines earlier this month for becoming the first publicly traded company worth move than $700 billion in market capitalization, but it's dividend deserves some attention too. After all, ever since Apple first initiated a payout back in 2012, the firm's dividend checks have been on a swift growth trajectory, up 8% in the last year alone. And as Apple's cash piles up behind the scenes, a dividend hike is starting to look very likely for the coming quarter. Apple's consumer devices have continued to enjoy blockbuster success, with the iPhone seeing its best quarter of sales in company history. Likewise, sales remain brisk for the Macintosh, iPad and iTunes store, due in no small part to the fact that Apple's product ecosystem is designed to encourage using multiple devices. Likewise, the firm's decision to own both the hardware and software on its devices is critical. It means that Apple's can save costs on hardware specs but still outperform competing devices in performance by fine-tuning software. From a financial standpoint, Apple is in spectacular shape, with $141.5 billion in net cash and investments on its balance sheet. That's enough to cover nearly 20% of AAPL's gargantuan market cap today, a big risk reducer. While much of that big cash cushion is held overseas and would incur penalties if repatriated, the writing is on the wall that the current administration is pushing for a solution to the ongoing tug-of-war with corporate overseas cash. Right now AAPL pays a 47-cent dividend that adds up to a 1.5% yield. Look for a hike to that payout in the coming quarter. Must Read: 5 Tech Stocks to Trade for Earnings Season Gains Wells Fargo Big bank Wells Fargo is catching some momentum this month. Since the end of January, this $286 billion bank has rallied more than 7%, beating the bounce in the rest of the S&P 500 by almost double. Wells has long been one of the best-yielding big banks -- it pays a 35-cent quarterly dividend payout that's good for a 2.5% yield right now. But investors could be getting another raise in the next month or so. Wells Fargo is one of the four biggest U.S. banking companies, with more than a trillion dollars in assets. That means it's also one of the biggest participants in the real estate market, servicing some $2 trillion in loans -- a buoyant real estate market is a major plus for mortgage servicers, Wells included. Like its other big peers, WFC grew its scale during the financial crisis, acquiring smaller rivals at fire sale prices with the government's blessing. Now, with the tides turned on the economy, Wells has a huge base of cheap deposits that it can deploy to create above-average returns. In a low interest rate environment, Wells' ability to cross-sell services such as wealth management has become increasingly important. Clearly something is working here: WFC boasts the highest fee revenues of any of the big banks at around 2.4% of assets. It's unlikely the Fed will put the kibosh on a dividend hike from WFC. If history is any indication, it'll come at the end of next month. Must Read: 5 Stocks Set to Soar on Bullish Earnings Walt Disney Walt Disney is having a pretty stellar start to 2015. Earlier this month, Disney reported its first-quarter earnings numbers, stomping expectations and rallying hard on the news -- and it's only been moving higher from there. Disney is up more than 10.5% since the calendar flipped to January, but perhaps more impressively, it's the fourth-biggest contributor to the S&P 500's performance over that stretch of time. Disney is the house that Mickey Mouse built -- although, after the first quarter, Frozen deserves some credit too. The firm's vast intellectual property vault is rife with cross selling opportunities, as new films make their way from theaters, onto merchandise, in company-owned television programming and networks, and into theme parks. Films may have the prestige, but TV networks actually generate more than half of all operating profits, thanks to cash cows such as ESPN, ABC and the Disney Channel. In recent years, the firm has doubled down on its plans to expand its IP assets beyond in-house characters, acquiring Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. That acquisition spree hasn't been cheap -- and Disney's businesses are extremely capital intense. Still, the firm has minimal leverage on its balance sheet right now: just $16.5 billion in debt. Even that debt load is offset by more than $7 billion in cash and investments. Disney may not be a deep value play at current levels, but it's not getting any cheaper. Look for a boost to the firm's 1.1% dividend yield in the next quarter. Must Read: 5 Rocket Stocks to Buy as the Market Hits New Highs Qualcomm Mobile phone chipmaker Qualcomm isn't just the world's largest wireless chipmaker. It is also generally one of the highest-yielding big stocks in the mobile tech space, paying out a nearly 2.4% dividend yield, which works out to 42 cents a share each quarter. And it looks likely to announce a dividend hike early next month. Qualcomm owns an important piece of a fast-growing space. With short replacement cycles in mobile handsets, demand for newer faster chips has stayed high as consumers replace their old phones. And every phone sale generates cash for Qualcomm, even if the firm’s chips aren’t used. While manufacturing chips is still the biggest part of QCOM's business, it's also a major patent licensor, collecting royalties for effectively every 3G and 4G LTE handset that rolls off an assembly line today. The resolved antitrust investigation in China is a big relief for QCOM shareholders. Not only does a one-time $975 million fine resolve the issue – it also reaffirms Qualcomm's ability to defend its intellectual property in China. Qualcomm has plenty of cash to pay its fines -- $31.6 billion in cash and investments and no debt. That's also plenty of dry powder to boost the firm's dividend in early March. Must Read: 4 Big Tech Stocks to Trade (or Not) General Motors One of the more interesting names on our list of potential dividend hikers is General Motors . GM came out of bankruptcy in 2009 swinging, and it's managed to cut costs, improve quality, and most importantly, move cars. Right now, GM pays a 30-cent quarterly dividend check that adds up to a 3.2% dividend yield. In the immediate-term, GM's dividend hike is a bit of a lay-up. The firm announced earlier this month that it was raising its payout to 36 cents per share once the board approved it, but CFO Chuck Stevens also said that GM could hike its shareholder yield even more in 2015 once the firm's ignition switch recall debacle is resolved. GM used to make a lot of the same car under a bunch of different brand stickers. The problem was that it wasn't a very good car. That's changed. Today, GM only operates four brands in the United States (down from eight pre-bankruptcy; it still operates another seven brands internationally). That change means that GM is able to make bigger brank distinctions and avoid customer confusion. Build quality was a major sticking point for GM in decades past, and it's finally been able to strike a balance between profitability and building desirable high-quality cars. While labor costs are around a third of their previous highs per work hour, they're unlikely to remain this low forever, and in the long-run management will need to find a way to balance the realities of manufacturing in the U.S. with the concessions workers made during the bankruptcy. The bottom line is that this isn't your father's General Motors -- and that's a very good thing for investors. Keep an eye out for another dividend raise in 2015. -- Written by Jonas Elmerraji in Baltimore. Must Read: 5 Stocks Insiders Love Right Now Follow Stockpickr on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.
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