KO, XOM, CAT, PG, PFE, IBM, INTC, T, VZ
Any stock in the DJ30 (US) or FTSE100 (UK)
Examples of "Blue Chip" stocks are the Dow 30 stocks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djia
The name "blue chip" came about because in the game of poker the blue chips have the highest value.
But in the stock market, "value" can be derived in many ways. Benjamin Graham is a scholar and financial analyst who is widely recognized as the father of value investing. His famous book, "The Intelligent Investor", has gained recognition as one of the best and most important investment pieces written illustrating the fundamentals of a value-investing strategy.
Rather than simply relying on static metrics, a full picture can only be determined by examining the quality of the earnings, as well as other corporate performance measures.
While a blue-chip company may have survived several challenges and market cycles over the course of its life, leading to it being perceived as a safe investment, this may not always be the case. The bankruptcy of General Motors and Lehman Brothers and Enron, as well as a number of leading European banks, during the global recession of 2008, is proof that even the best companies may sometimes be unable to survive during periods of extreme stress.
Other examples of blue chip stocks losing their blue chip status can be found in the many revisions of the DJIA and S&P 500 indices themselves.
The original twelve stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average consisted almost entirely of commodity-based firms and were as follows:
American Cotton Oil
American Sugar
American Tobacco
Chicago Gas
Distilling & Cattle Feeding
General Electric
Laclede Gas
National Lead
North American
Tennessee Coal & Iron
U.S. Leather Pfd.
U.S. Rubber
Do you recognize any of these names? That's right, GE is the only one that remains of the original companies in the DJIA.
These are just large, long established companies.
WMT, XOM, MMM, T, MO, PM, HON, MSFT, Etc.....
