The aerospace and defense sector has been a popular investment in recent years. Two stocks in that sector I have been following for quite some time are Northrop Grumman (NOC) and Raytheon (RTN). Both companies are Dividend Achievers, a group of stocks with 10+ years of consecutive dividend increases. You can see the entire list of all 261 Dividend Achievers here.
A major reason this industry is so popular with investors is the amount of money that the U.S. and governments around the world are spending on defense. President Trump is proposing increasing the amount the U.S. spends on defense for fiscal year 2019. This would be a 13% increase from 2017 levels and 7% more than is asked for in the 2018 proposal. During the latest game of government shutdown chicken, members of both parties agreed to raise the budget caps for the next two years.
