Fantastic Yields And Where To Find Them: Top 3 Yields From The Dow 30

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, also known as simply the Dow for short, is a collection of 30 of the largest public companies in the United States.

The index simply tracks the performance of the 30 stocks that consist of the "who's who" of corporate America; the index is also diverse in terms of industry and products sold.

The "Industrial" part of the title is merely historic, as the index dates back to the late 1880s. Today, the index is composed of companies in media, entertainment, telecommunication, restaurants and insurance, among others.

A stock that is included in the index is often referred to as a Dow component.

Companies are added and taken away to the index by the owners of the index, S&P Global.

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The majority of companies that make up the index are household names, or companies that own brands that are mostly recognizable by the majority of people. The biggest company by market capitalization is Apple Inc. AAPL, and General Electric Company GE is the only current company that was included in the original index back in the 1800s.

The Dividend Component

Given the size and stature of a Dow component, companies typically pay a consistent stream of dividends to shareholders. Dividend payments offer long-term investors a tremendous opportunity to not only collect a cash payment consistently, but benefit from an upswing in the stock.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett invested more than $1 billion in The Coca-Cola Co KO in the late 1980s and has been collecting a dividend check since. As of early May, Buffett holds 400 million shares of Coca Cola, which pay a dividend of $0.33 per share and implies the "Oracle of Omaha" collects a check of $132 million each quarter.

Coca-Cola, like every Dow component, is expected by investors to not only pay a steady dividend but increase dividend payments over the years.

Here are the top 3 highest dividend yielding stocks in the Dow 30:

• Chevron Corporation CVS: The oil and gas company has a dividend yield of 4.32 percent.
• Verizon Communications Inc. VZ: The telecommunication giant has a dividend yield of 4.15 percent.
• Caterpillar Inc. CAT: The seller of heavy machinery has a dividend yield of 3.76 percent.

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