Consumer Staples Stocks Pay Steady Dividends

Consumer staples include everyday staples such as food, beverages (alcoholic and soft), tobacco, household and personal care products. Usually the overall demand for consumer staples tends to remain constant from year to year, so these companies and their stocks perform reasonably well even when economic activity slows. Therefore, some people call consumer staples a defensive group.

Most consumer staples companies pay regular quarterly dividends and many have a long-term record of increasing their dividends, making them excellent stocks for a long-term dividend-reinvestment portfolio.

Here are 20 well-known U.S. consumer staples stocks.

20 Consumer Staples Stocks
Company	Quote	Principal Products
Campbell Soup	CPB	Food
Church & Dwight	CHD	Household and personal care products
Clorox	CLX	Consumer products.
Colgate-Palmolive	CL	Consumer products.
Coca-Cola	KO	Beverages
ConAgra Foods	CAG	Food
Costco Wholesale	COST	Diversified financial services.
General Mills	GIS	Financial investment and advisory services.
HJ Heinz	HNZ	Food
Hershey	HSY	Candy
Kellogg	K	Food
Kroger	KR	Retail food stores
PepsiCo	PEP	Beverages
Procter & Gamble	PG	Consumer products
Sara Lee	SLE	Food
Safeway	SWY	Retail food stores
SUPERVALU	SVU	Retail food stores
Whole Foods Market	WFMI	Retail food stores
Winn-Dixie Stores	WINN	Retail food stores
Wrigley Company	WWY	Chewing gum and candy

Besides owning individual stocks, you can own consumer staples companies through exchange-traded funds. All of the following ETFs own large, well-known consumer staples companies.

Consumer Staples ETFs
ETF and Web Site	Quote
Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR Fund	XLP
iShares Dow Jones U.S. Consumer Goods Sector Index Fund	IYK
iShares S&P Global Consumer Staples Index Fund	KXI
PowerShares Dynamic Consumer Staples Sector Portfolio	PSL
Rydex S&P Equal Weight Consumer Staples ETF	RHS
Vanguard Consumer Staples ETF	VDC

Related Articles:

Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs)
Food and Beverage Stocks

Posted December 5, 2007.