Blue Chip Dividend Stocks

"Blue chip" has no formal definition, which is worth saying plainly before a list claims to contain them. The term describes large, long-established companies with a reputation for weathering downturns — and reputation is not a screenable field. What can be screened for is the substance behind it: size, a real dividend, and a payment record that has survived more than one cycle.

This list applies those tests. It covers US companies above $10 billion in market value that currently pay a dividend, ranked by yield. Companies of that size are not immune to trouble — several household names have cut their dividends in the last decade — but they are far less likely to cut in response to a single weak quarter, and they generally have the balance sheet to keep paying through one.

Yields here are modest by design. A large, stable company trading at a fair price does not yield 12%, and when one appears to, the market is usually pricing in a cut. Two to four percent is the normal range, and the interest in these names is less the current payment than the likelihood of still receiving it in ten years.

Check the growth column: a company that has raised its dividend for many consecutive years has demonstrated something a size screen cannot.