To The Moon

Who doesn't like to get paid to own something while doing nothing? That's precisely the allure of dividend stocks. Although it's usually mature companies that pay dividends because management feels the company has the capacity to generate returns for shareholders by paying them straight cash rather than reinvesting in the business.

The best dividend stocks balance this reinvestment and shareholder payout, likely resulting in a lowerdividend yield. However, these are some of the best stocks to invest in for the long haul, and I think there are three stocks investors should be taking a closer look at during July.

Microsoft$Microsoft(MSFT)$ is the second-largest company by market cap in the U.S. market but has growth many others would be jealous of. Sporting just under a 1% dividend yield, Microsoft is familiar to many with its business product suite and personal computing products like Xbox and the Surface Book.

However, investors should be most excited about its Intelligent Cloud, which experienced year-over-year sales growth of 26% to $19.1 billion during Microsoft's third quarter (ended March 31). Its Azure cloud computing division led the way and experienced 46% year-over-year growth.

 As a whole, Microsoft's revenue rose 18% over the prior year to $49.4 billion, withearnings per sharerising 9%. For the fourth quarter, Microsoft expects revenue of $52.8 billion at the midpoint, indicating 14% growth. Microsoft is likely to announce a dividend increase, as it has maintained its current quarterly payout of $0.62 per share over the last four quarters.

With the cloud computing market estimated to hit $1.6 trillion by 2030 and Azure owning a 21% market share, Microsoft could be sitting on a $336 billion future revenue stream.

Microsoft has solid future growth prospects and a decent dividend payout. These factors make Microsoft a solid choice when looking for dividend stocks.