In the US, the key to the economy is the consumers. How they collectively spend their money drives the economy, however there are large consumer companies which should make profits because consumers buy their products year in, year out. The question is which ones do you start looking at? Peter Ashton of Recognia used his company’s Strategy Builder software to search. The criteria was:

market capitalization of $ 5 billion or more.

dividend yield of at least 2%

companies must have raised their dividends by 4% or more in the past year (Current Yield /Past Year’s Yield)

a beta between 0 and .75  which means the stock has 75% or less volatility than the overall market – the stock prices are more stable.

Rank  Company                      Ticker                 Mkt Cap              Beta            Dividend                Dividend Growth

(US$ Bil)                                 Yield %                  Rate      %

1. Philip Morris Int’l            PM-N                 121.8                  0.70               5.3                          8.4
2. Altria Group                    MO-N               106.3                   0.61               4.2                          8.7
3. Coca-Cola                     KO-N                 172.5                   0.49               3.3                          8.9
4. Hershey                        HSY-N                  20.3                   0.70               2.5                         12.7
5. Proctor & Gamble           PG-N                196.1                   0.62               3.7                           5.9
6. Kellogg                              K-N                   23.5                  0.59                3.0                          5.6
7. Kraft Heinz                     KHC-Q                 83.9                  0.33                3.1                          4.9
8. Campbell Soup               CPB-N                 15.7                  0.51                2.5                          7.6
9. Dr. Pepper Snapple          DPS-N                 14.9                 0.61                2.4                           7.9
10. Clorox                               CLX-N                 14.8                 0.54                2.7                           4.2

Linking to dividend paying stocks, there are many choices and all the above companies are good choices. They are hard to go wrong with for they produce goods people tend to buy on a very regular basis and will continue to buy. Mr. Ashton used some criteria, but you always add more to eliminate or narrow down the field. Will you double and triple your money? once in a while but what you will not do is lose money and the first rule of investing is not to lose money. The dividend helps ensure you do not lose money.

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