5 Best Blue Chip Stocks To Own For 2014

Kiplinger's Personal Finance writer Carolyn Bigda looks at a trio of favored blue chip stocks, each providing investors with yields above 5%.

Steve Halpern: We are here today with Carolyn Bigda of Kiplinger's Personal Finance. How are you doing, Carolyn?

Carolyn Bigda: I am fine, thank you.

Steve Halpern: In your recent article for Kiplinger's, which just hit the newsstands this week, you look at what you call Steady Eddie stocks, long-term dividend payers, and for this article, you focus on stocks yielding 5% or more. First off, you look at AT&T (T). Could you explain what the attraction behind that idea is?

Carolyn Bigda: Sure. AT&T is paying just north of 5%, which is a pretty big yield for telecom, and the company—as you said earlier—these are Steady Eddies.

And the company has raised its dividend consecutively for 29 years, which is a pretty good record. You have a pretty reliable dividend payer with a very attractive yield.

5 Best Blue Chip Stocks To Own For 2014: Philip Morris International Inc(PM)

Philip Morris International Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in the manufacture and sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products in markets outside of the United States. Its international product brand line comprises Marlboro, Merit, Parliament, Virginia Slims, L&M, Chesterfield, Bond Street, Lark, Muratti, Next, Philip Morris, and Red & White. The company also offers its products under the A Mild, Dji Sam Soe, and A Hijau in Indonesia; Diana in Italy; Optima and Apollo-Soyuz in the Russian Federation; Morven Gold in Pakistan; Boston in Colombia; Belmont, Canadian Classics, and Number 7 in Canada; Best and Classic in Serbia; f6 in Germany; Delicados in Mexico; Assos in Greece; and Petra in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It operates primarily in the European Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Canada, and Latin America. The company is based in New York, New York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  Philip Morris International (NYSE: PM  ) will release its quarterly report on Thursday, and projections suggest that it will manage to deliver decent results for investors. But shareholders don't seem convinced about Philip Morris earnings, as they've recently sent the stock down substantially from its May highs.

• [By Rich Duprey]

  Global tobacco giant�Philip Morris International (NYSE: PM  ) announced this morning its second-quarter dividend of $0.85 per share, the same rate it's paid for the past three quarters after raising the payout 10% from $0.77 per share.

5 Best Blue Chip Stocks To Own For 2014: Chevron Corporation(CVX)

Chevron Corporation, through its subsidiaries, engages in petroleum, chemicals, mining, power generation, and energy operations worldwide. It operates in two segments, Upstream and Downstream. The Upstream segment involves in the exploration, development, and production of crude oil and natural gas; processing, liquefaction, transportation, and regasification associated with liquefied natural gas; transportation of crude oil through pipelines; and transportation, storage, and marketing of natural gas, as well as holds interest in a gas-to-liquids project. The Downstream segment engages in the refining of crude oil into petroleum products; marketing of crude oil and refined products primarily under the Chevron, Texaco, and Caltex brand names; transportation of crude oil and refined products by pipeline, marine vessel, motor equipment, and rail car; and manufacture and marketing of commodity petrochemicals, plastics for industrial uses, and fuel and lubricant additives. It a lso produces and markets coal and molybdenum; and holds interests in 13 power assets with a total operating capacity of approximately 3,100 megawatts, as well as involves in cash management and debt financing activities, insurance operations, real estate activities, energy services, and alternative fuels and technology business. Chevron Corporation has a joint venture agreement with China National Petroleum Corporation. The company was formerly known as ChevronTexaco Corp. and changed its name to Chevron Corporation in May 2005. Chevron Corporation was founded in 1879 and is based in San Ramon, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Matt Thalman]

  Dow movers
  Oil has been on quite the run over the past two days. Yesterday, light crude rose 3.25% and today it was up 1.72%. Not surprising, the Dow's big oil companies also moved higher. Shares of Chevron (NYSE: CVX  ) closed the day higher by 1.19%, while ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM  ) moved higher by 1.57%. Today's moves followed yesterday's performance when Chevron increased by 1.47% and Exxon by 1.28%. While the two have recently been moving in line with each other, year to date Chevron is up more than 14% while Exxon has only increased by a little more than 4%. A number of analysts have stated that they believe Chevron will outperform Exxon over the next five years, and so far their predictions look good.�

Top 10 Safest Companies To Own In Right Now: Colgate-Palmolive Company(CL)

Colgate-Palmolive Company, together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and markets consumer products worldwide. It offers oral care products, including toothpaste, toothbrushes, and mouth rinses, as well as dental floss and pharmaceutical products for dentists and other oral health professionals; personal care products, such as liquid hand soap, shower gels, bar soaps, deodorants, antiperspirants, shampoos, and conditioners; and home care products comprising laundry and dishwashing detergents, fabric conditioners, household cleaners, bleaches, dishwashing liquids, and oil soaps. The company offers its oral, personal, and home care products under the Colgate Total, Colgate Max Fresh, Colgate 360 Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Eric Volkman]

  It's one of the steadiest dividend payers on the market, and it's continuing to fly level. Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL  ) has declared a fresh quarterly common stock dividend, which is to be $0.34 per share, paid on August 15 to shareholders of record as of July 23. That amount matches the firm's previous distribution; this was paid in May. Prior to that, Colgate-Palmolive handed out $0.31 per share.

• [By Jon C. Ogg]

  Colgate-Palmolive Co. (NYSE: CL) was raised to Overweight from Equal Weight and the price target is now $68 (versus a $59.93 close) at Morgan Stanley.

5 Best Blue Chip Stocks To Own For 2014: Visa Inc.(V)

Visa Inc., a payments technology company, engages in the operation of retail electronic payments network worldwide. It facilitates commerce through the transfer of value and information among financial institutions, merchants, consumers, businesses, and government entities. The company owns and operates VisaNet, a global processing platform that provides transaction processing services. It also offers a range of payments platforms, which enable credit, charge, deferred debit, debit, and prepaid payments, as well as cash access for consumers, businesses, and government entities. The company provides its payment platforms under the Visa, Visa Electron, PLUS, and Interlink brand names. In addition, it offers value-added services, including risk management, issuer processing, loyalty, dispute management, value-added information, and CyberSource-branded services. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Steve Heller]

  It seems that once you've grown large enough to disrupt business as usual for MasterCard (NYSE: MA  ) and Visa (NYSE: V  ) , you run the risk of getting muscled. MasterCard recently announced plans to raise prices on intermediated payment processors (read: digital wallets) that chose to withhold valuable transaction details from MasterCard. In other words, this measure takes direct aim at eBay's (NASDAQ: EBAY  ) PayPal and other digital wallets such as Google Wallet that do not share transaction details with the payment processor.

• [By Alex Planes]

  What's in your wallet? The tag line might not be Visa's (NYSE: V  ) , but the answer almost certainly is. At the end of 2011, there were 261 million Visa credit cards and 392 million Visa debit cards circulating in just the United States. People around the world are more likely to have a Visa card than they are to have a cell phone, and are far more likely to have a Visa card than they are to hold any competing card:

5 Best Blue Chip Stocks To Own For 2014: Apple Inc.(AAPL)

Apple Inc., together with subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, and markets personal computers, mobile communication and media devices, and portable digital music players, as well as sells related software, services, peripherals, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications worldwide. The company sells its products worldwide through its online stores, retail stores, direct sales force, third-party wholesalers, resellers, and value-added resellers. In addition, it sells third-party Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod compatible products, including application software, printers, storage devices, speakers, headphones, and other accessories and peripherals through its online and retail stores; and digital content and applications through the iTunes Store. The company sells its products to consumer, small and mid-sized business, education, enterprise, government, and creative markets. As of September 25, 2010, it had 317 retail stores, including 233 stores in the United States and 84 stores internationally. The company, formerly known as Apple Computer, Inc., was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Cupertino, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rick Munarriz]

  Is a $200 Windows 8 device even possible given Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT  ) steep licensing ransom when pitted against the freely available Android? What about Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) ? Margins have been contracting at the consumer tech titan, but is Apple ready for this kind of price war?