Generally Blue-Chips are used to refer to high quality large-cap established firms.Unlike small and medium caps blue-chips tend to less volatile and the probability of a firm going bankrupt is very small.
In order to identify the blue-chips of Eurozone countries, investors can use The EURO STOXX 50 Index. This index is comprised of 50 blue-chips from the Eurozone member countries of Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.
One simple and easy way to invest in these firms is via the SPDR® EURO STOXX 50® ETF (FEZ). This ETF mimics the performance of the index. The fund has a dividend yield of 3.30% and an assets base of over $2.6 billion. The top three sectors in the fund are financials, industrials and consumer-staples.
The full list of the fund’s holdings are shown below:
Source: SPDR
Another way investors can access these European blue chips is to invest in the stocks of these firms individually. With this approach investors can pick and choose the sectors or companies that they want to focus on and avoid the ones they don’t want.
Disclosure: Long Banco Santander SA (SAN), Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria S.A (BBVA) , E.ON SE (EONGY), AXA Group (AXAHY) and ING Groep N.V. (ING)
