When you purchase individual stocks, risk is inherit. Sometimes bad things happen to good stocks. Eventually, every investor will hold a stock that falls out of favor and endures a double-digit decline. Understanding this from the onset makes it easier to deal with. To minimize the risk of significant declines, your core portfolio should focus on blue-chip dividend growth stocks.

Listed below are select companies that have recently elected to raise their payout and yield by increasing their cash dividends to shareholders:

American Campus Communities, Inc. (ACC) is an independent equity real estate investment trust. May 2, the company increased its quarterly dividend 6.7% to $0.36 per share. The dividend is payable May 30, 2013, to shareholders of record at the close of business on May 16, 2013. The yield based on the new payout is 3.3%.

Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (CPK), a diversified utility company, engages

This is a companion article to my one the other day on Dividend Champions with yields that are 50% greater than that on a 10-year Treasury.

So many Champions (41 out of 105) qualified under that standard that I have raised the qualifying hurdle for Challengers from 150% of the Treasury yield to 200%.

As I write this, the yield on the 10-year Treasury is 1.74%. (Source = Bloomberg. A few days ago when I wrote the other article, it was 1.86%.) So a yield twice as much as the current 10-year Treasury would be 3.48%. For simplicity, I will use 3.5% as the cutoff.

So the stocks in the table below are Dividend Contenders with yields of 3.5% or more. Since these are Dividend Contenders, each has raised its annual dividend for at least 10 consecutive years.

The scorecard is that 56 Contenders out of 201 qualify.

In

Over the past week, the boards of directors for several income stocks approved plans to boost investors' dividends. Only five of these companies had boosted distributions for over five consecutive years. In this article I have presented only the companies that passed the first screen, along with a brief analysis of each company. The companies include:

Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT), a security and aerospace company, engages in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems and products in the areas of defense, space, intelligence, homeland security, information technology and cyber security in the United States and internationally. The company raised its quarterly distributions by 15% to $1.15 /share. This marked the 10th consecutive annual dividend increase for Lockheed Martin. Yield: 4.90%

The stock looks attractively valued at the moment, trading at 11 times earnings and yielding 4.90%. The dividend is well covered. In my previous analysis

This company is big, really big. It is a global security and aerospace enterprise that employs about 120,000 people worldwide and has a market cap of over $29 billion dollars with net sales for 2011 of $46.5 billion.

This company is looking to deliver value to its investors based on its Chairman and CEO's quote from September 27th:

Despite the uncertain environment, we remain focused on meeting our customer commitments and increasing the efficiency of our operations. Delivering value to our customers enables us to generate value for our investors.

For ten consecutive years this company has increased its dividend at a double-digit rate. Once again it has kept the string alive by increasing its dividend at a double-digit rate and is now yielding 5%. Who is this company? It is...

Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), the world's largest military weapons manufacturer, which is also a significant supplier

Do you like to invest with a stock's momentum trends? With that idea in mind, we ran a screen.

We began by screening the utilities sector for stocks currently rallying above their 20-day, 50-day, and 200-day moving averages, indicating that these stocks have strong upward momentum.

We then screened for those stocks with strong sales trends, comparing growth in revenue to growth in accounts receivable. Since accounts receivable is the portion of revenue not yet received, and there is no guarantee the money will ever be received, the smaller the portion of revenue made up of receivables the healthier the company's revenue.

We screened for stocks seeing faster growth in revenue than accounts receivable year-over-year, as well as accounts receivable comprising a smaller portion of current assets over the same time period.

For an interactive version of this chart, click on the image below. Analyst ratings sourced from Zacks Investment

For those of you who can and will short stocks or buy put options (both of which increase in value as stocks lose their value), you don't have to really care which way the market goes -- you can make money in either direction. For those who are "long only" investors who are only buy-then-sell stocks, though, your choices may feel limited right now. Don't throw in the towel too quickly, as there are some arenas with stocks going higher.

Utilities (XLU) in general have been one of the safer plays whenever the market/economy faces real trouble because they have relatively stable dividends and revenues. In particular, water is one that many are focusing on as a "hot commodity" of the future -- many are anticipating that as the global population grows, technologies for clean water and water rights/costs will become more and more important (and potentially profitable) over

The past week was the busiest week for dividends increases that I have noticed in my four and a half years as a dividend blogger. There were 66 companies which raised distributions. Apparently, no one bothered to inform these Board of Directors committees about the potential for steep increases in taxes on dividend income. I chose to highlight 25 of these companies that have been able to successfully raise dividends for over 5 years in a row. Corporations’ dividend policies are typically forward looking. Companies that announce dividend increases do so, only after a careful consideration of future economic and business factors, in order to make certain that it will be able to afford the increased payout. This vote of confidence shows that few corporate boardrooms consider the risk of increases in tax rates to be a big issue. This is also a vote of confidence in the business

When many investors think of stable dividends, they think utility stocks. Many investors wrongly believe that the dividends and equity returns of utility stocks are guaranteed by the government. This is not true. In fact, utilities have gone bankrupt in the past and may do so from time to time in the future. They are not risk free.

As it turns out, many top dividend utility stocks, including Artesian Resources (ARTNA), Central Vermont Public Service (CV), Verizon (VZ), FirstEnergy Corp. (FE), Otter Tail Corporation (OTTR), and Progress Energy (PGN) have precariously high dividend payout ratios and weak Altman Z-scores.* Do dividend investors have better alternatives for income generating stocks?

As it turns out, investors have options. As alternatives to these utilities, stocks across sectors were screened based on the following criteria:

A payout ratio under 0.60. These firms have more earnings from which to reinvest in the firm or

These days many investors are seeking out commodity linked investments and stable businesses and dividend paying equities. There are several investment options that may meet all of these criteria, but one that is often overlooked is water.

Water is essential for all life on Earth. Water covers the majority of the planet, but most of it is undrinkable because it is seawater, or freshwater that has been somehow tainted by pollutants or a biological hazard. Of the water that is potable, a good deal of it frozen in glaciers, or in some other way inconveniently located.

As the world population increases, the need for drinkable water will also increase. Nonetheless, we are already at a stage where short-term water shortages are possible even in first world nations. Some less fortunate regions are consistently suffering from water shortages, and the situation will only be complicated by future population growth and related

These stocks have been raising their dividends for more than 25 years. The yields from some of these stocks are attractive, though their valuations are at a premium. For now take note of them and keep an eye out when they are selling at reasonable valuations.

MGE Energy Inc. (MGEE): The dividend has been increased for 35 consecutive years. The yield is 3.3% and the annual payout is $1.53. The quarterly payout was increased by 2% to $0.3826 with the payout ratio at 56.68%. The growth rate over the last decade is a paltry 1.2%.

The stock is up 5.2% for the year and trades at a trailing price/earnings multiple of 17.09, slightly expensive when looking at Wisconsin Energy Corporation (WEC) at 15.5 and Integrys Energy Group (TEG) at 16.48. It recently hit a new 52 week high.

Whilst the yield is attractive, the dividend growth rate is nothing

By Lisa Springer

A commodity that soon may become more precious than gold or oil is, surprisingly enough, clean water.

It may sound far-fetched, but reliable sources such as the World Health Organization have been warning that the Earth is rapidly running out of clean drinking water. Today, more than a billion people worldwide lack access to clean water and, by 2050, it's estimated that more than 4 billion people (half of the Earth's projected population) will face severe water shortages. In the United States, the Southwestern states could be bracing for fresh water shortages even sooner -- by 2025, according to some estimates.

Water shortages are imminent because supply hasn't kept up with the growth of the world's population. In fact, by the end of the 20th Century, the world's population had tripled, while, fresh-water supply hasn't changed in more than a million years. And unlike fossil fuels that

Utilities can be great investment vehicles. Utilities provide electricity, and fuel to heat our homes and cook our food. Americans regard electricity and gas as necessities and anyone who has to forego them for very long knows just how important they are to so many facets of daily life. For exactly this reason, we like them as investments. In the universe of utility providers, perhaps the least attention is paid to the companies that provide the most basic necessity, water.

I’ve selected 10 companies for analysis today. I want to see if they deserve the attention we alluded to earlier. I’ll compare them to a peers, suggest my final picks and tell you why.

American Water Works Company, Inc. (AWK), trading at about $32.09 is a mid cap ($5.63 billion) and the largest company in our group today. AWK’s trailing twelve month price/earnings ratio is 18.28 and the price/earnings

Who knows a company better than anyone else? Company insiders, such as members of the board and upper management. The stock buying trends of these insiders are a great source for investors looking for interesting stock ideas.

We ran a screen on the utilities sector for stocks seeing the most significant net insider buying over the last six months.

‪ Interactive Chart: Press Play to compare changes in analyst ratings over the last two years for the top six stocks mentioned below. Analyst ratings sourced from Zacks Investment Research.‬

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We also created a price-weighted index of the stocks mentioned below, and monitored the performance of the list relative to the S&P 500 index over the last month. To access a complete analysis of this list's recent performance, click here.

Do you think these stocks will outperform like insiders expect? Use this list

When looking for value-priced stocks, the Price-To-Book (P/B) ratio is one that I like to focus on. P/B is calculated as share price divided by book value per share. Book value is most often calculated as Assets less Liabilities.

Some people conservatively calculate book value as Assets less Intangibles less Liabilities. I prefer the latter since it excludes goodwill and other intangibles which would be difficult to recover in a liquidation, and that is what is used in the calculations below.

P/B is like yield, when it is at an extreme you have to question why it is there. If you determine it is the result of an irrational market movement, a purchase could result in both a higher yield and significant future capital appreciation.

A low P/B ratio could indicate a stock is undervalued or distressed. Since GAAP accounting is mostly based on historical cost, a viable growing

A previous article highlighted a high-yield strategy in defensive sectors that, when tested over the past 10 years, has resulted in an annualized compound growth rate of over 10% when factoring in dividends. One consequence of targeting the higher yielding products is a heavy weighting toward MLPs.

I personally like MLPs, their structure of paying cash-flows that compare to high-yielding products, the defensive companies that operate under this structure such as pipelines that do not have profits directly tied into commodity prices, and the tax differences investors benefit from since they're only limited partners. Some, on the other hand, think MLPs are extremely overvalued. I am not here to argue such a point, but instead I propose a modification of the 'defensive strategy' that will remove MLPs.

Targeting Decent Yields That Are MLP-Free

The strategy is quite similar to my standard defensive one, with a couple of minor adjustments

The environmentalists say the earth is running out of clean water. In fact,only about 3% of the total volume of Earth's water is "fresh". Over a billion people on Earth lack the ability to receive clean drinking water. This is due to global climate changes, contamination, drought, and poor sewage systems, among other reasons.

I have always liked water; simple, clean, healthy, and refreshing. I researched a few companies that throw off an attractive yield and have performed rather well in this disaster of a market. Maybe these 3 stocks will even douse some of the fires that have popped up in your portfolio:

Artesian Resources Corporation--(ARTNA) through its subsidiaries, provides water, wastewater, and engineering services on the Delmarva Peninsula. It distributes and sells water to residential, commercial, industrial, municipal, and utility customers in the states of Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The company also offers water for public and

Though utilities have proven to be the most resilient in the recent market downturn, some fared better than others. Which utility stocks are most resistant to down markets?

To answer this question, utility stocks were screened and sorted based on their performances over week-long downturn that lasted through August 9^th, 2011.^* Over the course of this week, the S&P500 index dropped over 13.3% while the mean drop for a broader sample of 4541 equities was 10.1%, providing an opportunity to observe sector differences during extreme market drops. ^**

The ranking of industry performance follows differences in beta. This makes sense since beta is a measure