30 Blue-Chip Stocks With the Best Analyst Ratings

Volatile markets might keep you up at night, but long-term investors would do well to remember that they're also a chance to get high-quality stocks at bargain prices.

Closeup on a stack of blue poker chips
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Volatile markets might keep you up at night, but long-term investors would do well to remember that they're also a chance to get high-quality stocks at bargain prices. Hey, any time blue-chip stocks go on sale, investors should be ready to pounce.

Wall Street analysts certainly think that way. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 4% in the first quarter of 2018. The broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index lost nearly 3%, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite declined 2%. And the general retreat in share prices has analysts licking their chops over all the great buys to be found.

From financial services to the energy sector to tech stocks, brand-name companies with massive market values look like rock-solid buys, analysts say. To see which blue-chip stocks they love the most, we turned to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

S&P Global Market Intelligence surveys analysts' ratings on stocks and scores them on a five-point scale, where 1.0 equals "Strong Buy" and 5.0 means "Strong Sell." Any score of 2.0 or lower means that analysts, on average, rate the stock a buy. The closer the score gets to 1.0, the better.

After screening the S&P 500 for large-cap, blue-chip stocks with the best analyst scores, we came up with 30 companies. These are the buy-rated blue chips that Wall Street analysts love the most.

Disclaimer

Data is as of April 4, 2018. Companies are listed by strength of analysts' buy recommendations, from lowest to highest. Dividend yields are calculated by annualizing the most recent quarterly payout and dividing by the share price. Analysts' ratings provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Click on ticker-symbol links in each slide for current share prices and more.

Dan Burrows
Senior Investing Writer, Kiplinger.com

Dan Burrows is Kiplinger's senior investing writer, having joined the august publication full time in 2016.


A long-time financial journalist, Dan is a veteran of SmartMoney, MarketWatch, CBS MoneyWatch, InvestorPlace and DailyFinance. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Consumer Reports, Senior Executive and Boston magazine, and his stories have appeared in the New York Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News and Investor's Business Daily, among other publications. As a senior writer at AOL's DailyFinance, Dan reported market news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and hosted a weekly video segment on equities.


Once upon a time – before his days as a financial reporter and assistant financial editor at legendary fashion trade paper Women's Wear Daily – Dan worked for Spy magazine, scribbled away at Time Inc. and contributed to Maxim magazine back when lad mags were a thing. He's also written for Esquire magazine's Dubious Achievements Awards.


In his current role at Kiplinger, Dan writes about equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities, funds, macroeconomics, demographics, real estate, cost of living indexes and more.


Dan holds a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and a master's degree from Columbia University.


Disclosure: Dan does not trade stocks or other securities. Rather, he dollar-cost averages into cheap funds and index funds and holds them forever in tax-advantaged accounts.