Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Invest In 2015

The market got a helping hand from Europe -- of all places -- today, while positive news on the domestic front combined to send stocks higher. The European Central Bank's decision to cut rates to historic lows in just a few days put equities on firmer ground, coupled with rising consumer spending and a jump in real estate sales. When all was said and done, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI  ) ended up 106 points, or 0.7%, at 14,818.

But as much as those macroeconomic developments were responsible for the rise of the blue chips, it was tech stocks that really lifted the index. Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ  ) was one notable beneficiary of tech's popularity surge Monday, adding 2.6%. Since HP has seen its stock slip at the expense of a move to tablets from PCs, today's report showing an uptick in consumer spending doesn't hurt things.�

Although also heavily reliant on the declining PC market, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT  ) tacked on 2.6% as well. While Microsoft's Surface tablet has had some trouble gaining traction and its new Windows 8 operating system hasn't blown anybody away, the company is making legitimate progress in the cloud computing landscape. Its Azure business division just crossed the $1 billion annual sales mark, with subscriptions to its service rising nearly 50% in the last six months alone.

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Invest In 2015: Colgate-Palmolive Company(CL)

Colgate-Palmolive Company, together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and markets consumer products worldwide. It offers oral care products, including toothpaste, toothbrushes, and mouth rinses, as well as dental floss and pharmaceutical products for dentists and other oral health professionals; personal care products, such as liquid hand soap, shower gels, bar soaps, deodorants, antiperspirants, shampoos, and conditioners; and home care products comprising laundry and dishwashing detergents, fabric conditioners, household cleaners, bleaches, dishwashing liquids, and oil soaps. The company offers its oral, personal, and home care products under the Colgate Total, Colgate Max Fresh, Colgate 360 Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Demitrios Kalogeropoulos]

  Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL  )
  Colgate's shares are trading well below the $62 high they hit just last month. The consumer goods company is heavily levered to international sales, with more than 80% of its business coming from outside the U.S. and more than half coming from emerging markets.

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Shares of Procter & Gamble have dropped 3.2% during the past 12 months, lagging Unilever’s (UL) 2.5% rise, Colgate-Palmolive’s (CL) 8.7% advance and Kimberly-Clark’s (KMB) 3.1% gain.

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Invest In 2015: International Business Machines Corporation(IBM)

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) provides information technology (IT) products and services worldwide. Its Global Technology Services segment provides IT infrastructure and business process services, including strategic outsourcing, process, integrated technology, and maintenance services, as well as technology-based support services. The company?s Global Business Services segment offers consulting and systems integration, and application management services. Its Software segment offers middleware and operating systems software, such as WebSphere software to integrate and manage business processes; information management software for database and enterprise content management, information integration, data warehousing, business analytics and intelligence, performance management, and predictive analytics; Tivoli software for identity management, data security, storage management, and datacenter automation; Lotus software for collaboration, messaging, and so cial networking; rational software to support software development for IT and embedded systems; business intelligence software, which provides querying and forecasting tools; SPSS predictive analytics software to predict outcomes and act on that insight; and operating systems software. Its Systems and Technology segment provides computing and storage solutions, including servers, disk and tape storage systems and software, point-of-sale retail systems, and microelectronics. The company?s Global Financing segment provides lease and loan financing to end users and internal clients; commercial financing to dealers and remarketers of IT products; and remanufacturing and remarketing services. It serves financial services, public, industrial, distribution, communications, and general business sectors. The company was formerly known as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. and changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation in 1924. IBM was founded in 1910 and is based in Armonk, New York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Nicholas Kitonyi]

  HP, which also produces printers has been in the receiving end, with the printer business stagnating despite being the company's cash cow over the recent past. But now, HP seems to have found a new lease on life in the form of corporate technology services. Now this is an area already dominated by Oracle Corporation (ORCL), International Business Machines (IBM) and Cisco Systems (CSCO), and HP wants to make it a major catalyst in its turnaround.

• [By Dimitra DeFotis]

  Among the largest components of the�SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average exchange-traded fund�(DIA),�Visa�(V) and�International Business Machines�(IBM) are slighlty higher today, while�Goldman Sachs�(GS) shares rose nearly a point.

• [By Alex Planes]

  Tabulating a dynasty
  IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) was created on June 16, 1911, as the result of a merger between three technically inclined manufacturing businesses. It was known as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company until 1924 -- the same year that Ford built its 10 millionth Model T. CTR, as it was sometimes known, traced its origins to an inventor named Herman Hollerith, who devised a punched-card tabulator that offered tremendous time savings for enterprises (like the U.S. Census) engaged in the tedium of tallying up vast quantities of data. However, it wasn't Hollerith who built IBM into the business-services behemoth you know today. Much of IBM's character was formed during the tenure of the two Thomas Watsons, a legendary father-and-son executive pair that guided the company for more than half a century. You can read more about IBM's origins and its Watson-driven rise to prominence when you click on this link.

5 Best Wireless Telecom Stocks To Own Right Now: McDonald's Corporation(MCD)

McDonald?s Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a worldwide foodservice retailer. It franchises and operates McDonald?s restaurants that offer various food items, soft drinks, coffee, and other beverages. As of December 31, 2009, the company operated 32,478 restaurants in 117 countries, of which 26,216 were operated by franchisees; and 6,262 were operated by the company. McDonald?s Corporation was founded in 1948 and is based in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Jonas Elmerraji]

  Fast food giant McDonald's (MCD) has been a laggard in 2013. While its 10% rally would look impressive almost any other year, it's been anemic this year, as the big indexes have churned out more than twice the performance since the calendar flipped over to January. But the golden arches could be getting ready to make up some lost ground.

  McDonald's is the biggest name in fast food, with more than 34,900 restaurants spread across 120 countries. MCD isn't a typical restaurant business -- the vast majority of its locations are franchised, and the firm even owns the land underneath many of those franchised locations. Those factors give McDonald's more in common with a REIT than with the diner down the street. In recent years, the firm has made efforts to move its menus upmarket with more healthy options and amenities like in-store WiFi.

  While those efforts have helped move McDonald's up the food chain a bit, the firm's real growth potential comes from emerging markets, where the chain enjoys a much more appealing image with a growing population of middle class consumers. MCD's unique business model should keep shoveling income to investors in 2014 -- at present, this Dow Dog's quarterly dividend payout works out to a 3.34% yield.

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Invest In 2015: Chevron Corporation(CVX)

Chevron Corporation, through its subsidiaries, engages in petroleum, chemicals, mining, power generation, and energy operations worldwide. It operates in two segments, Upstream and Downstream. The Upstream segment involves in the exploration, development, and production of crude oil and natural gas; processing, liquefaction, transportation, and regasification associated with liquefied natural gas; transportation of crude oil through pipelines; and transportation, storage, and marketing of natural gas, as well as holds interest in a gas-to-liquids project. The Downstream segment engages in the refining of crude oil into petroleum products; marketing of crude oil and refined products primarily under the Chevron, Texaco, and Caltex brand names; transportation of crude oil and refined products by pipeline, marine vessel, motor equipment, and rail car; and manufacture and marketing of commodity petrochemicals, plastics for industrial uses, and fuel and lubricant additives. It a lso produces and markets coal and molybdenum; and holds interests in 13 power assets with a total operating capacity of approximately 3,100 megawatts, as well as involves in cash management and debt financing activities, insurance operations, real estate activities, energy services, and alternative fuels and technology business. Chevron Corporation has a joint venture agreement with China National Petroleum Corporation. The company was formerly known as ChevronTexaco Corp. and changed its name to Chevron Corporation in May 2005. Chevron Corporation was founded in 1879 and is based in San Ramon, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By William L. Watts]

  Walt Disney Co. (DIS) rose 2.7%, while Coca-Cola Co. (KO) and Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) �each added 0.9%, making them top gainers among blue chips, while Chevron Corp. (CVX) , down 1%, was the biggest decliner.

• [By Marc Courtenay]

  It would sure look responsible for a big integrated energy company like XOM or Chevron (CVX) to acquire the leading provider of environmental, energy and industrial services in North America. The company serves a diverse customer base, including a majority of the Fortune 500 companies, thousands of smaller private entities and numerous federal, state, provincial and local governmental agencies.

• [By Paul Ausick]

  Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) rose 1.63% for the day to close at $113.51, in a 52-week range of $109.27 to $127.83. WTI prices closed above $100 a barrel yesterday and traded above that level for most of the day today before closing at around $99.90. Share volume was about 7% below the daily average of around 6 million shares traded.

• [By Aaron Levitt]

  Recent deals with oil and gas majors like Chevron (CVX) have made ARII’s backlog for new rail cars jump to a whopping 6,300. That�� almost as many cars it shipped altogether in 2012. Those backlog orders and tank car leases have also helped ARII beat earnings estimates in the last few quarters.

Top 5 Blue Chip Stocks To Invest In 2015: Apple Inc.(AAPL)

Apple Inc., together with subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, and markets personal computers, mobile communication and media devices, and portable digital music players, as well as sells related software, services, peripherals, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications worldwide. The company sells its products worldwide through its online stores, retail stores, direct sales force, third-party wholesalers, resellers, and value-added resellers. In addition, it sells third-party Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod compatible products, including application software, printers, storage devices, speakers, headphones, and other accessories and peripherals through its online and retail stores; and digital content and applications through the iTunes Store. The company sells its products to consumer, small and mid-sized business, education, enterprise, government, and creative markets. As of September 25, 2010, it had 317 retail stores, including 233 stores in the United States and 84 stores internationally. The company, formerly known as Apple Computer, Inc., was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Cupertino, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By WALLSTCHEATSHEET]

  Apple is an innovator that works to provide appealing products and services to consumers and companies worldwide. A flurry of positive headlines, including planned events, have pushed the stock higher and may continue to do so. The stock has now broken above a base established earlier this year. Over the last four quarters, earnings have been decreasing while revenues have been rising. Relative to its peers and sector, Apple has been a weak year-to-date performer. Look for Apple to pick it up and OUTPERFORM.

• [By David Zeiler]

  Activist investors have been more active than ever before over the past year and increasingly have gone after some of the most commonly held stocks in Corporate America, including Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), The Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE: PG), and J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (NYSE: JCP).

• [By Evan Niu, CFA]

  Following recent controversy surrounding the U.S. government's "Prism" program,�Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) has detailed its policies and information surrounding customer privacy and government data collection.