Blue Chip Stocks To Buy 2018
Beleaguered General Electric (GE (opens in new tab), $14.63) was almost out of the woods and on the road to recovery, rallying more than 20% from its April low spurred most recently by news it was finally starting to shed pieces of itself. Namely, GE is offloading its locomotive arm to rival Wabtec (WAB (opens in new tab)). More divestitures were presumed to be in the cards as the iconic blue chip aims to streamline and focus.
blue chip stocks to buy 2018
For the record, I was the one to suggest software giant Microsoft (MSFT (opens in new tab), $94.26) was one of the top Dow Jones stocks to buy for 2018. I stand by that assessment, too. CEO Satya Nadella is making major headway into the cloud computing market, and the company is redefining technology as a business tool. MSFT has deserved most of the 230% advance it has dished out over the past five years.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, a $500 billion business and the dominant high-level foundry for advanced chips, is next on the list. In the semiconductor industry, foundries are companies that manufacture chips for other companies, and TSM enjoys a massive market share for chips 7 nanometers and under. Apple, which has started to shift its supply chain away from China, is one of TSM's biggest customers. The company reported fourth-quarter results that beat both top- and bottom-line expectations, with revenue jumping 43% and earnings per share surging 78%. Trading at just 14 times earnings and paying a 2% dividend, TSM is, incidentally, yet another Buffett holding, and its shares have been crushing it in early 2023, posting gains of 27.7% through March 23. TSM is the best-performing stock among the best stocks to buy so far in 2023.
This article describes the characteristics I look for in a blue chip stock, and then lists three I like right now. These are some of the more interesting stocks for 2021 in my opinion, for those that plan to hold for a long time.
A blue chip stock in my opinion is better-judged by how wide its moat is, rather than based on size of the company. This is more of an art than a science, but the key quantitative indicator of a moat is a consistently high ROIC for long periods of time.
Investors continue to pour money into passive vehicles such as indexed mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. However, good old-fashioned stock picking and asset allocation with a human touch still rules in some areas - including in the well-trodden world of blue-chip stocks.
Using data from Morningstar Direct, we were able to discover which blue-chip stocks are most widely held by the biggest actively managed U.S. mutual funds. In other words, these are the 25 most popular stock picks among professional portfolio managers.
As a blue-chip health-care stock with a massive market value, Pfizer ( PFE , $36.22) is a natural choice for a wide swath of mutual funds seeking a balance of income and growth. For example, at T. Rowe Price ( TROW ), Pfizer can be found in 41 separate mutual funds, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Invesco ( IVZ ) offers 42 funds with stakes in Pfizer.
Pfizer has been a market laggard over the past one-, three- and five-year periods, but its massive market value, attendant liquidity and blue-chip status should help maintain its popularity with active portfolio managers.
Whether you're playing defense or just looking for dividends, you can't really ignore Verizon ( VZ , $47.40). The telecommunications giant is as blue-chip as they come. Indeed, it's the sole telecom in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It's also a Dividend Achiever, having hiked its payout every year since 2007.
The Chinese e-commerce leader is an elite stock market pick, especially in this market. Also chosen as one of the seven best stocks to buy for 2018, there's no reason BABA can't follow up its impressive January outperformance (shares rose 18 percent) with another impressive showing in February.
Most auto stocks suffered a major thrashing in the late-2018 market sell-off, and a few of them are yet to fully recover from the clobbering. This means that stocks of many companies are still selling at surprisingly low prices.
For the first quarter of 2018 and for the month of March, small-cap domestic stocks, as measured by the S&P 600 Index, ended with a positive gain. The S&P 400 Index, composed of mid-cap stocks, did slightly less better in March and gave up more than 1 percent in the first quarter.
As a TSMC spokesperson told Time, the roots of the industry's current chip challenges date back to 2018. Everything was becoming connected, from packaging to refrigerators, and smartphone demand was skyrocketing, but demand for cars was soft. To meet the need, semiconductor manufacturers began allocating more supply of now-critical automotive components like MCUs to other industries. This became a huge problem when car demand jumped unexpectedly in the last quarter of 2020 and continued through the first half of 2021 thanks to low interest rates and consumers having more expendable income than they anticipated. 041b061a72