Book excerpt: 500 Vital Data on Earnings, Dividends, and Share Prices Exclusive Analysts' Stars Recommendations Key Income and Balance Sheet Statistics Company Addresses, Telephone Numbers, and Names of Key Corporate Officers The Standard & Poor's 500 Index is the most watched index in America--if not the world. Whether you're an individual investor looking to make a smart stock purchase, an executive researching corporate competitors, or a job seeker looking for concise and up-to-the-minute overviews of potential employers, you'll find the critical, often hard-to-find information you need in Standard & Poor's 500 Guide, 2010 Edition. Easy to use and packed with market intelligence on all 500 of the companies listed in the S&P 500 Index, this authoritative reference includes: Information on the bluest of blue chip stocks, from Abbott Labs and GE to Microsoft and Yahoo! Summaries of each company's business activity, sales history, and recent developments Earnings and dividends data, with three-year price charts Exclusive Standard & Poor's Quality Rankings (from A+ to D) New introduction by David M. Blitzer, Ph.D., Managing Director & Chairman of the Index Committee, Standard & Poor's In addition, unique at-a-glance detail: Stocks with A+ Quality Rankings Companies with five consecutive years of earnings increases--a key indicator of strong long-term performance! Companies with 10 consecutive years of increasing dividends Put the comprehensive, updated data and analysis expertise of the world’s premier securities information firm at your fingertips, with Standard & Poor's 500 Guide, 2010 Edition. Standard & Poor's, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., is the nation's leading securities information company. It provides the respected Standard & Poor's ratings and stock rankings, advisory services, data guides, and the most closely watched and widely reported gauges of stock market activity—the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, S&P SmallCap 600, and S&P Super Composite 1500 stock price indices. Divisions of Standard & Poor's operate independently of each other. Standard & Poor's, S&P, S&P 500 are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC.