Your favorite stocks, investments, and why? Please include ticker symbol too!

[SteelReign]

It seems like there's plenty of guys on this forum that know a whole bunch about stocks and investment so I'll come out and say it: I'm a total newb at this sort of thing and I'm just getting my feet wet. Since getting my first real job out of college I've been putting the most I could toward my 401k and roth IRA, but I've been putting them into an S&P 500 index fund. It hasn't really done much besides giving me dividends.

Recently I decided to branch out and pick a few companies that I liked and seemed to have a good future and put a bit of leftover money into those ETFs. So far its beeng going alright, but I wanted to see if there's more that I'm missing out on. That comes to my question for everyone:

What's your favorite companies that you invest in (including ticker symbol) and why?

[suprachica79]

I like my Vanguard 500 mutual fund. It's an incredibly steady and safe fund. Took about a 33% decrease during the meltdown but has climbed I believe all the way back up to where it was.

Edit: I believe the ticker is VFINX

[bambbrose]

I made a killing on GV this year, got lucky and bought in quantity at 0.2610/share.

DSM has been stable dividend
AAPL of course
SCCO, but that is a commodity play. Dividends are great
MS is a bargain below $17. They are currently priced below their book value.