Top Blue Chip Stocks To Buy For 2014

�While its two peer indexes finished the day essentially unchanged, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI  ) dropped 0.3% as AT&T (NYSE: T  ) Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG  ) sank the blue chips following earning releases. Durable-goods orders for March were down significantly, falling 5.7% against an expected drop of 3.1%, and February's increase was also revised downward. It was the worst drop orders in seven months for products like cars, appliances, and furniture, and the category fell 1.4% excluding the more volatile transportation segments. Stocks were up Europe and Asia earlier, but concern about earnings and the durable-goods report seems to have dampened any carryover effect.

After reporting earnings last night, AT&T shares finished down 5% and fell another 1.5% after hours. Investors were disappointed that Ma Bell reported losing a net total of 69,000 cell phone subscribers. The country's No. 2 telecom made strong gains on tablet data plans, but that wasn't even to avert concerns that its bigger rival, Verizon, was leaving it in the dust. EPS were in line with estimates at $0.64, but revenue fell by 1% in the quarter, a bigger drop than expected.

Top Blue Chip Stocks To Buy 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 Sara Murphy]

  Joe also discusses particular risks to offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. BP (NYSE: BP  ) will have six rigs under firm contract there by December 2014, more than any other operator. Shell (NYSE: RDS-A  ) will come in second with five rigs. Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE: APC  ) is expected to have four operating rigs by then, followed by Chevron (NYSE: CVX  ) with three under firm contract and ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM  ) (NYSE: XOM  ) with two. Watch the following video to learn how climate change could affect these companies.

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  Lately, energy stocks have made a nice comeback. After lagging the Dow for the first half of 2013, both ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM  ) and Chevron (NYSE: CVX  ) have started out July on the right foot, with Exxon hitting a new five-year high today and Chevron approaching its own all-time record-high share price.

• [By Arjun Sreekumar]

  What's next for the global LNG trade?
  Going forward, however, the rare drop last year is likely to be an anomaly, with the number of countries participating in the global LNG trade set to grow sharply. This year, BG Group forecasts that the global LNG trade will grow by a modest 5.4 million tons, bolstered by exports from Angola -- where Chevron (NYSE: CVX  ) recently shipped its first cargo from the Angola LNG plant -- and new terminals in Australia, as well as an increase in imports from Singapore and Malaysia, and an offshore facility in Israel.

• [By Matt Thalman]

  Shares of Chevron (NYSE: CVX  ) are down 1% today as the price of crude sinks. Just yesterday the stock was up 1.1% for the session, and I commented on how even at their current price, shares look rather cheap. The company is trading at less than 10 times earnings and pays a healthy 3.2% dividend yield. When we look at the company from a growth perspective, it doesn't look like a big winner with a market cap of $245 billion, so it's unlikely the stock will more than double in the coming years. But the strong dividend, combined with increasing worldwide demand for oil and energy, will make Chevron a stable winner for the years to come.

Top Blue Chip Stocks To Buy 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 Efficient Alpha]

  Philip Morris International (PM) is a favorite of mine, not only for its 4% dividend but also for its protection against global inflationary pressures. The company can pass through higher commodity prices and smokers will keep coming back for more. The company has 16% of the international market and is making strong progress in China. Asia accounts for 36% of sales, followed by the EMEA region (27%), the EU (26%) and Latin America/Canada (11%). Shares have posted an annual return of 15% since its spinoff in 2008.

Best Heal Care Stocks To Watch 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 John Maxfield]

  Alternatively, the worst performing stock on the blue-chip index at the time of writing is IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) , down 2.6% in mid-afternoon trading. As my colleague Dan Dzombak pointed out, the impetus here stemmed from worse-than-expected quarterly results from its competitor Accenture (NYSE: ACN  ) . For its fiscal third quarter, Accenture marginally beat expectations on the bottom line with earnings per share of $1.14, but missed on the top line with revenue of $7.2 billion. The concern for IBM is that it will have a similar experience in terms of sales and thereby miss analyst estimates for its own upcoming quarter.

• [By Alex Planes]

  Originally built by Eckert and Mauchly under their own brand, UNIVAC proved so costly and time-consuming to develop that the duo sold their business to Remington-Rand -- which still operates in the computing industry today as Unisys (NYSE: UIS  ) -- before completing the project. UNIVAC was designed from the ground up for business use rather than scientific calculation, and represented the first real digital threat to IBM's (NYSE: IBM  ) punched-card tabulators, which had been the Census Bureau's preferred number-crunching tools for decades. However, their astronomically high cost -- $750,000 for the eight-ton machine and another $185,000 for the high-speed printer -- kept UNIVAC from becoming a big-business hit, even after it nailed the results of President Dwight Eisenhower's landslide 1952 election victory with only 1% of the vote recorded. That wasn't for lack of trying on Remington Rand's part:

Top Blue Chip Stocks To Buy 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 Dividend Growth Investor]

  In a previous article, I outlined that it is getting more difficult to find quality dividend paying stocks to buy. Most of the usual suspects like Kimberly-Clark (KMB) or Colgate-Palmolive (CL) are very overvalued today, which prevents me from adding to my positions there. Other companies like Chevron (CVX) are attractively valued today, but unfortunately my portfolio is overweight in them. Currently I find the oil sector to be cheap and have some of the lowest P/E ratios in the market. However, I would hate to be concentrated in one sector which is exposed to the fluctuating prices in its commodity products.

• [By Demitrios Kalogeropoulos]

  Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL  )
  Colgate's shares are trading well below the $62 high they hit just last month. The consumer goods company is heavily levered to international sales, with more than 80% of its business coming from outside the U.S. and more than half coming from emerging markets.

• [By Travis Hoium]

  Colgate-Palmolive
  Toothpaste and toothbrushes may not be exciting business, but it's consistent and consumers tend to develop habits they rarely break. Once they find a toothpaste brand they like, it could be years before they try another one. That leads to another incredibly consistent business for Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL  ) , one that has paid back investors with a dividend since 1895. �

Top Blue Chip Stocks To Buy For 2014: 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 Dividend Growth Investor]

  McDonald�� Corporation (MCD), together with its subsidiaries, franchises and operates McDonald�� restaurants primarily in the United States, Europe, the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa. This[/color]dividend champion has paid dividends since 1976 and increased distributions on its common stock for 36 years in a row.

• [By Matt Thalman]

  This past week, eight of the Dow Jones Industrial Average's (DJINDICES: ^DJI  ) 30 components reported earnings: McDonald's (NYSE: MCD  ) , Du Pont, AT&T (NYSE: T  ) , Travelers, Untied Technologies (NYSE: UTX  ) , Caterpillar, Boeing (NYSE: BA  ) , and 3M.

Top Blue Chip Stocks To Buy 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 Holly LaFon]

  Companies need to constantly innovate to provide better value for their customers. They need to communicate the value. Globally, consumers have been willing to pay up for healthier products that will benefit them longer term. There is a tremendous opportunity for businesses that are on a virtuous cycle working to provide better value for their customers all the time. Unilever has done a good job staying close to their customers and has outperformed P&G, in my opinion, in many foreign markets. P&G is not executing up to its full potential. They may need to reenergize brands through spinoffs. Apple (AAPL) exemplifies the positive result of a tenacious drive to provide a superior product for the customer.

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  Who's earning stateless income?
  Two months ago, Congressional hearings focused on tax strategies that many multinational corporations have successfully used to minimize their corporate tax liability. A Senate subcommittee report found that Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) successfully saved billions of dollars in potential U.S. tax liability by using foreign business entities. Because those units didn't have any legally determinable country of origin for tax purposes, the earnings they generated became stateless income.