Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Own For 2014

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI  ) started off earnings season on a strong note, gaining 89 points, or 0.6%, in relatively steady trading. On a day with no major economic reports, the good feelings from last week's employment report and optimism about earnings season seemed to carry the blue chips higher. Alcoa (NYSE: AA  ) kicked off the quarterly announcements after hours today, as the aluminum maker slightly beat expectations with an adjusted earnings per share of $0.07 versus the consensus at $0.06, and reiterated its forecast for aluminum demand to increase 7% this year. Revenue fell 2% to $5.85 billion on lower metal prices, but that also beat estimates of $5.83 billion. After a gain of 1.4% during the trading session, shares fell back 0.25% following the report.

Tech stocks were behind the curve today, as the Nasdaq gained just 0.16%, mainly because Intel (NASDAQ: INTC  ) got downgrades from Citigroup and Evercore Partners, slashing 3.6% off of the chipmaker's share price. Citi analyst Glen Yeung said there was a ceiling in Intel's share price, given weakening PC sales and repeated downward earnings revisions. Evercore, meanwhile, said unit sales of Intel chips could be down as much as 10% this year as PC sales continue to fall further than expected.

Top 5 Shipping Companies For 2015: McDonald's Corporation(MCD)

McDonald?s Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a worldwide foodservice retailer. It franchises and operates McDonald?s restaurants that offer various food items, soft drinks, coffee, and other beverages. As of December 31, 2009, the company operated 32,478 restaurants in 117 countries, of which 26,216 were operated by franchisees; and 6,262 were operated by the company. McDonald?s Corporation was founded in 1948 and is based in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Andrew Marder]

  Unlike J. Crew and Tory Burch, the reason I want in on Five Guys is for the beautiful simplicity of the business. Murrell now oversees a business that should generate over $1 billion in revenue in 2013. While the company is still far short of McDonald's (NYSE: MCD  ) $6.6 billion, Five Guys seems to be managing a feat that McDonald's has failed at over the last few quarters: growth.

• [By The Part-time Investor]

  The following stocks met the criteria in January of 2008 and were put into the initial portfolio:

  Abbot Labs (ABT)Advanced data processing (ADP)Associated Banc-Corp (ASBC)Bank of America (BAC)BB&T Corp. (BBT)Bemis Company (BMS)Anheuser Busch (BUD)The Chubb Corporation (CB)Clorox (CLX)Comerica Inc. (CMA)Diebold Inc. (DBD)Emerson Electronics (EMR)First Dollar Corp. (FDO)First Third BanCorp. (FITB)Gannett Co, Inc. (GCI)General Electric (GE)Hershey (HSY)Illinois Tools Works (ITW)Johnson and Johnson (JNJ)Leggett and Platt (LEG)Eli Lilly (LLY)La-Z-Boy (LZB)McDonald's (MCD)Marsh and Ilsley (MI)M&T Bancorp (MTB)PepsiCo (PEP)Pfizer (PFE)Procter & Gamble (PG)Pentair Ltd. (PNR)Regions Financial Corp. (RF)Rohm and Haas (ROH)RPM International (RPM)Sherwin Williams (SHW)Sysco Corp. (SYY)UDR Inc. (UDR)

  Historical quotes were taken from Yahoo Finance. $10,000 was put into each position, to the nearest whole share, so a total of $349,262.89 was invested. From 1/15/08 through 5/16/13 all dividends were reinvested back into the stock that paid them. If a dividend cut was announced, that stock was sold on the ex-div date of the new, lower dividend.

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Own For 2014: 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 Ben Levisohn]

  Shares of Procter & Gamble have gained 0.1% to $81.44 at 2:06 p.m. today, while Unilever (UL) has risen 0.6% to $43.96, Colgate-Palmolive (CL) is little changed at $65.65 and Kimberly-Clark (KMB) has advanced 0.5% to $111.31.

Top 5 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 Teresa Rivas]

  It�� been a good week for Visa�(V) and�MasterCard�(MA)��wo days in and they��e enjoyed two rounds of upgrades.

  Today, the bullishness comes from Janney Montgomery Scott�� Thomas McCrohan and Leonard DeProspo, who boosted their ratings on both names to Buy.

  For Visa, the upgrade came with a target price increase from $210 to $240 and they write that the recent selloff in the name provides an attractive entry point ��o own one of the better business models in payments.��They count the company�� powerful network, worldwide brand, and its role in influencing payment standards among its core strengths, and note that the increase of mobile payments has also served to increase the number of places where Visa is accepted.

  They write that strong margin expansion in the past year and a half means that mid-to-high teens earnings per share growth is possible even if margins contract this quarter and next, as the company�� guidance suggests.

  More thoughts below:

  Changes to FANF fees beginning April 1, 2015. Last week, Visa modified its FANF pricing (Fixed Acquirer Network Fee) to include a 15 bps volume-based charge for sub-merchants of payment aggregators. Previously, payment aggregators only paid one lump sum payment of $40,000 per month, which created a cost advantage for aggregators versus traditional acquirers and ISOs that were required to pay a separate FANF fee per merchant location. The new FANF pricing is 15 bps of monthly volume, which translates into $30 million of incremental high-margin fee income for Visa based on $20 billion of aggregator volume.

  Fiscal 2014 EPS guidance achievable. First quarter margins of 65.8% were a record, and were 230 bps above the previous record (FQ1-2012). FY 2014 EPS guidance calls for mid-to-high teen growth but assumes higher operating expense in 2Q and 3Q and ongoing F/X headwinds from current turmoil in emerging markets. Mid-to-high teen EPS growth appears reasonable gi

• [By Nick Taborek]

  Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Visa (V) Inc. and Nike Inc. (NKE) will be added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU), replacing Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) and Alcoa Inc. (AA) in the biggest reshuffling since April 2004.

• [By Chris Hill]

  Shares of Visa (NYSE: V  ) rose to an all-time high on Thursday after the company reported stronger-than-expected second-quarter earnings. Should investors buy Visa, or is MasterCard (NYSE: MA  ) the better bet? In this installment of MarketFoolery, our analysts discuss Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and the future of the payments industry.

• [By Paul Ausick]

  Another big gainer today was Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) which traded up 1.59% at $215.50 in a 52-week range of $161.27 to $235.50. The Dow�� highest priced stock slipped initially Monday morning as investors seemed worried about the suit filed against the company last week by Walmart. But the stock popped back up as quickly as it had dropped and remained at a higher level the rest of the day. Volume was about two-thirds the daily average of around 3.3 million shares traded.

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Own For 2014: International Business Machines Corporation(IBM)

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) provides information technology (IT) products and services worldwide. Its Global Technology Services segment provides IT infrastructure and business process services, including strategic outsourcing, process, integrated technology, and maintenance services, as well as technology-based support services. The company?s Global Business Services segment offers consulting and systems integration, and application management services. Its Software segment offers middleware and operating systems software, such as WebSphere software to integrate and manage business processes; information management software for database and enterprise content management, information integration, data warehousing, business analytics and intelligence, performance management, and predictive analytics; Tivoli software for identity management, data security, storage management, and datacenter automation; Lotus software for collaboration, messaging, and so cial networking; rational software to support software development for IT and embedded systems; business intelligence software, which provides querying and forecasting tools; SPSS predictive analytics software to predict outcomes and act on that insight; and operating systems software. Its Systems and Technology segment provides computing and storage solutions, including servers, disk and tape storage systems and software, point-of-sale retail systems, and microelectronics. The company?s Global Financing segment provides lease and loan financing to end users and internal clients; commercial financing to dealers and remarketers of IT products; and remanufacturing and remarketing services. It serves financial services, public, industrial, distribution, communications, and general business sectors. The company was formerly known as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. and changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation in 1924. IBM was founded in 1910 and is based in Armonk, New York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Tom Taulli]

  Innovation: Innovation is a major priority at AT&T. And so far, it looks like the company is making savvy moves, particularly with its push into the cloud. To this end, AT&T has rolled out NetBond, which involves alliances with top providers like IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT), CSC (CSC) and Equinix (EQIX). But perhaps the most interesting growth initiative is Digital Life, which allows customers to use their smartphones as remote control devices with homes and cars. All in all, the opportunity could be huge, adding another nice revenue stream — AT&T already has agreements with companies like GM (GM), Ford (F), Nissan, Audi, BMW and Tesla (TSLA)