In keeping with the defensive theme from yesterday, another great stock for your portfolio is Proctor and Gamble or P&G. In mid October, P&G announced they had another quarter of strong sales growth. According to an article by Richard Naida and J Soundarya of Reuters, among the highlights of the sales was an increase in toothpaste sales of Crest and expensive face cream.

P&G was able to raise prices and consumers continue to buy their brands and invest in new products across most of its brands. P&G is a brand leader with many of its brands billion dollar sales leaders. Given the focus on the consumer, you likely have a brand or two in your home. The brands include Tide, Crest, Oil of Olay, Old Spice, Gillette, Ivory, Charmin, Pampers, Always and Head and Shoulders.

P&G is expecting growth of 5% in sales and the only division not doing well is Gillette but on the exciting news for investors, P&G has 63 years of consecutive dividend increases. The company is well managed and there is no reason to expect the increases will stop.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, a terrific stocks is one in which it is possible to both increase market share and raise prices on a yearly basis. Most companies can not, but there are some which can increase prices. For a dividend investor, the ability to raise prices makes it a wonderful stock to own for a long time.

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