The older and more fundamental a company is the less its stock price tends to fluctuate. Because of this investors are less likely to want to purchase the stock if they are looking to make money from capital gains. For that reason, many of these large businesses give out strong dividends, payout out much of the cash they earn each year to their shareholders. This makes their stock attractive to value investors and large, institutional investors looking for safe, steady earnings over time. Find and name three stocks in the S&P 500 that pay out dividends and list the amounts of their most recent dividend payments. I Basing an investment decision on average historical return is a very simplistic method of making such a decision. It's useful to know how well or how poorly a company has performed in the past, but there are many factors missing that can also influence that decision. What are a couple of those factors and how might they improve your ability to estimate the future success/struggles of a company? Focus on numerical factors, comparing them to the average historical return. Find the Betas for these stocks and then describe what they tell you about each stock's relative risk. (AMC, Ford, Johnson and Johnson, and ConocoPhillips)