US Dividend Aristocrats.

Standard & Poors has devised an excellent list of "dividend aristocrats," which have a long history of paying steadily increasing cash flows to their shareholders. Currently, the list contains over 50 names, I have listed 20 of them below, taking care to eliminate a number of the US financial companies from the list due to our abundance of financial names in Canada:


1 3M Company
2 Abbott Labs
3 AFLAC Inc.
4 ADM Archer-Daniels-Midland
5 Automatic Data Processing Inc.
6 Avery Dennison Corp.
7 BB&T Corporation
8 Becton, Dickinson
9 Century Telephone
10 Clorox Co.
11 Coca Cola Co.
12 Consolidated Edison
13 Dover Corp.
14 Emerson Electric
15 Exxon Mobil Corp.
16 Family Dollar Stores
17 JNJ Johnson & Johnson
18 Kimberly-Clark
19 Lilly (Eli) & Co.
20 McDonald's Corp.

More information on the Dividend Aristocrats can be found at:
http://www2.standardandpoors.com/portal/site/sp/en/us/page.topic/indices_dai/2,3,2,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0.html

Canadian Dividend Growth.

Given the importance of rising dividend income in your portfolio, below is a list of Canadian stocks with a great record of increasing their payments to you:

Bank of Montreal
IGM Financial
TransCanada Corporation
Great West Lifeco
Bank of Nova Scotia
Enbridge
Royal Bank of Canada
Toronto-Dominion Bank
Fortis
Manulife Financial
Toromont
RIOCAN Real Estate Trust
Canadian National Railway

The large number of financial stocks in the above list brings to attention the limited scope of the Canadian marketplace. It is, therefore, important to look outside of Canada as well. In my next post, I will highlight some great names from south of the border as well. Outside of the American financial industry of course : )