The reason to invest in General Mills (GIS) is simple: The stock is expected to generate market-beating total returns with extremely low stock price volatility. This makes General Mills a favorite of The 8 Rules of Dividend Investing. Click here to see The 8 Rules of Dividend Investing.

It’s very rare for a stock to offer both market-beating total returns and low stock price volatility.

Most low volatility stocks (think utilities) offer below-average total return prospects.

Conversely, most high total return stocks require investors to tolerate above average stock price movement (think value stocks and growth stocks).

Low Volatility & Low Risk

The claim that General Mills has low stock price volatility is uncontroversial. Click here to see why low volatility matters.

Over the last decade, General Mills has an annualized stock price standard deviation of 17.0%.

There are only 3 large cap stocks with 25 or more years of dividend payments without a reduction that have lower stock price volatility.  They are listed below:

All 3 of these stocks are extremely stable.  General Mills stock price volatility is in the same league of high quality dividend paying utility businesses.

In addition, the company has one of (if not the most) impressive dividend histories of any stock.

General Mills has paid steady or increasing dividends for 115 years.

General Mills has been so stable and successful for so long because it operates in a glacially-slow-moving industry.

Packaged and branded food products simply don’t change often. That’s because people will always need to eat (quite a bold statement!).

It is true that the popularity of particular foods wax and wane over time. Cereal, as an example, has slowly lost momentum over the last several years.