Best Blue Chip Companies To Buy Right Now

The past five years have been very good to some blue chip companies. But some missed the stock market rally.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) It's been five years since the stock market hit its low point of the financial crisis and Great Recession.

While the current bull market is already longer than average, most market strategists expect stocks to have another good year in 2014. Stocks gained last week, with the S&P 500 hitting new highs, despite the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. The Dow Jones industrial average is less than 1% away from its all-time high.

But with little economic and corporate earnings news on tap this week, it may be tough for stocks to move much higher. So instead of our usual preview of the days ahead, we've decided to take a look back at the best and worst performing S&P 500 stocks of the past five years.

Top 5 Energy Companies To Watch For 2015: Philip Morris International Inc(PM)

Philip Morris International Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in the manufacture and sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products in markets outside of the United States. Its international product brand line comprises Marlboro, Merit, Parliament, Virginia Slims, L&M, Chesterfield, Bond Street, Lark, Muratti, Next, Philip Morris, and Red & White. The company also offers its products under the A Mild, Dji Sam Soe, and A Hijau in Indonesia; Diana in Italy; Optima and Apollo-Soyuz in the Russian Federation; Morven Gold in Pakistan; Boston in Colombia; Belmont, Canadian Classics, and Number 7 in Canada; Best and Classic in Serbia; f6 in Germany; Delicados in Mexico; Assos in Greece; and Petra in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It operates primarily in the European Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Canada, and Latin America. The company is based in New York, New York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Dividend Growth Investor]

  Altria Group (MO) was able to spin-off its Kraft Foods division in 2007. Shareholders in Altria received shares in Kraft for each share of Altria stock they held. In 2008, this was followed by the spin-off of Phillip Morris International (PM), which represented the international tobacco business of Altria Group.

Best Blue Chip Companies To Buy Right Now: Visa Inc.(V)

Visa Inc., a payments technology company, engages in the operation of retail electronic payments network worldwide. It facilitates commerce through the transfer of value and information among financial institutions, merchants, consumers, businesses, and government entities. The company owns and operates VisaNet, a global processing platform that provides transaction processing services. It also offers a range of payments platforms, which enable credit, charge, deferred debit, debit, and prepaid payments, as well as cash access for consumers, businesses, and government entities. The company provides its payment platforms under the Visa, Visa Electron, PLUS, and Interlink brand names. In addition, it offers value-added services, including risk management, issuer processing, loyalty, dispute management, value-added information, and CyberSource-branded services. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Sue Chang and Ben Eisen]

  American Express Co. (AXP) �shares gained 3.6% while its competitor Visa Inc. (V) �rose 4.7%. American Express said late Thursday its fourth-quarter earnings jumped to $1.31 billion, or $1.21 a share, from $637 million, or 56 cents a share, a year ago. Excluding expenses, AmEx would have earned $1.25 a share. Revenue increased to $8.55 billion from $8.14 billion a year earlier.

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Yesterday, the bulls nearly erased a big early-day loss. Today, they’ve returned in force, as better economic data and earnings results helped boost the likes of General Electric (GE), American Express (AXP), Visa (V), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) and Walt Disney (DIS).

• [By Amanda Alix]

  A long-standing dispute between credit card issuers Visa (NYSE: V  ) and MasterCard (NYSE: MA  ) and the businesses that accept consumer payments via those instruments is heating up again, as a flurry of lawsuits filed on both sides over a prior settlement regarding interchange fees jump-start the hostilities all over again.

Best Blue Chip Companies To Buy Right Now: 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 Tom Taulli]

  There�� no doubt that Elon Musk will go down in history as one of the greatest entrepreneurs. He may even eventually reach the status of someone like Apple�� (AAPL) Steve Jobs. Consider that Elon Musk not only built SCTY and TSLA but also PayPal, which is a huge driver for eBay (EBAY). Oh, and he also is the mastermind of SpaceX.

• [By Daniel Sparks]

  On Thursday, ExxonMobil handed over the title to Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) once again as the world's most valuable company. Riding a solid third quarter and intensifying rumors for an iPhone and iPad refresh, Apple stock is up about 17% since it reported earnings. But even as the world's most valuable company, the stock still looks like an absolute bargain.

• [By Jon C. Ogg]

  Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) had spent much to most of the last year getting no respect. Despite Tim Cook feeling like Rodney Dangerfield, the consumer electronics giant saw an upgrade from the team at UBS to Buy from Neutral. It sounds positive that the price target was raised to $650 from $540, but there is something far more impressive and frankly almost shocking: Apple’s stock price is barely short of hitting a new 52-week high again, and that will be even closer after Wednesday.

Best Blue Chip Companies To Buy Right Now: 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 Monica Gerson]

  International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) reported downbeat third-quarter revenue. IBM shares declined 6.19% to $175.17 in the after-hours trading session.

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  Moreover, there's no guarantee that an employer will continue offering a cash-balance plan even once it's established. For instance, IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) froze its cash-balance plan five years ago.

• [By Daniel Sparks]

  It turns out that market leaders in the tech sector like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) , Google (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) , IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT  ) are better bargains than many typical cash cows, like Coca-Cola.

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  But amid the euphoria, it's important to keep a sense of perspective, and two of today's losing stocks make a more bearish case about prospects for the U.S. stock market. IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) was the worst performer in the Dow today, falling almost 2% after a Wall Street analyst downgraded the stock, citing sluggish emerging-market business activity. The drop comes after two straight days on which IBM has announced acquisitions, with today's purchase of private virtual-management company CSL following yesterday's closing on its buyout of SoftLayer Technologies, a cloud infrastructure company. Given the amount of influence IBM has on the Dow, a failure of the company to execute on its earnings-growth promises could point to difficulty throughout the tech sector, hurting one substantial contributor factor in the Dow's four-year bull market.