Blackrock’s Bob Doll says investors should focus on firms that pay strong dividends — but make sure that the firms have the free cash flows to raise their dividends. “Dividends work if the company raises the dividends. It’s about free cash flow, not the dividend” itself, Doll tells CNBC. “In a world that we muddle through and things are slowly get better, bonds are finished as an asset that improves. … They only do well if we have more of these big bumps in the road. Dividend-paying stocks that don’t raise their dividend are going to behave like bonds. That’s not a great place.” In the video below, Doll says the U.S. economy is “doing okay”, and says it’s important not to take short-term news and extrapolate it too far out into the future in this environment.