[1][2] As befits the sometimes high-risk nature of stock picking, the term "blue chip" derives from the card game poker.
[3][failed verification] This established connotation was first extended to the sense of a blue-chip stock in the 1920s.
[4][failed verification] According to Dow Jones company folklore, this sense extension was coined by Oliver Gingold (an early employee of the company that would become Dow Jones) sometime in the 1920s, when Gingold was standing by the stock ticker at the brokerage firm that later became Merrill Lynch.
Noticing several trades at $200 or $250 a share or more, he said to Lucien Hooper of stock brokerage W.E.
[5] The most popular index that follows United States blue chips is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a price-weighted average of 30 blue-chip stocks that are generally the leaders in their industry.