The best performing country in terms of economic recovery will be the US and some of the companies in the US are the best in the world. As the recovery picks up and becomes relative to the past normal economic activity, to lower the risk return ratio putting your money in the US stocks is a good idea. There are many methods to participate and one method is to look at the large cap US listed stocks  with good dividend yields and strong dividend records. Peter Ashton of Recognia Inc did this and published his results.

The process was to start with companies with a minimum capitalization (share price x number of shares outstanding) of $ 10 billion.

Out of those companies – more criteria – to focus on dividends and the quality of them

selected companies with dividend yields of 3 % or better.

To ensure payment of dividends – companies with a dividend coverage ratio of 250%  (to arrive at this figure the earnings per share divided by dividend paid over the past year)  The higher the number, the greater the expectation of payment to continue.

The third criteria is for companies with a history of raising their dividend payments over the past 5 years.

The important aspect of this chart is it helps to narrow the field. There are many companies on the stock markets, by narrowing the field to what you are looking for, this  helps you make better decisions. For the stock market, the best decisions are looking back, for the future will always be up or down. However, it is possible to lessen the risk.

The rankings were

Rank    Company      Ticket   Mkt Cap   Div Yield    Div Coverage   Div Growth 5 year

–            –                      –           billions       %                  %                          Average

1    Ford Motor           F-N          54.2         3.5                 455                            100.0

2.   Agrium                AGU-N    12.3         3.3                 283                             112.4

3. Seagate Tech       STX-Q     20.7         3.3                279                               90

4. Suncor Energy     SU-N      41.2         3.2                357                               31.3

5. Occidental Pete   OXY-N      57.7         3.7                286                              16.3

6.  Chevron               CVX-N  192.3            4.0                286                                9.1

7.  ConocoPhillips     OP-N     77.8              4.4                275                                7.8

8.  ExxonMobil           XOM-N  365.9            3.3                299                                9.8

9. Dow Chemical     DOW-N      50.3            3.8                290                                5.2

10. Caterpillar Inc       CAT-N      54.1           3.1                262                                7.6

11.  Kellogg                 K-N        22.8          3.0                276                                6.8

Linking to dividend paying stocks all the above are good companies to own and you can see some of them are linked to the oil industry. As the price has come down, some are available at lower stock prices; some will do better with a lower price of oil; some do better with a higher price. The decision you make is based on a number of factors but one thing you do know with the above companies the risk factors are down and for a long time the reward factors are high.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions