So last week's geopolitical shock sent most of the market into a tailspin. But here's what I've been noticing - the selloff looked way more dramatic than it probably should have been. The S&P 500 dipped around 2.4%, but some solid companies got hit way harder. That's usually when you start looking at what actually got oversold.

I've been eyeing a couple of blue chip stocks that took bigger hits than warranted. Apple dropped almost 6% since the tensions started, and Williams Companies fell about 3.3% after initially bouncing on Monday. Both are the kind of companies with real staying power, so the panic selling felt like an overreaction to me.

Let's talk Apple first. Yeah, it's only been public since 1980, but it's basically the textbook definition of a blue chip stock at this point. $3.85 trillion market cap, second only to Nvidia globally. The thing that matters though is the balance sheet - over $35.9 billion sitting in cash and short-term investments. That's the kind of cushion that lets you sleep at night during market chaos.

What's interesting is that Apple's business fundamentals are actually firing on all cylinders. Their latest quarter hit record revenue of $143.8 billion, up 16% year-over-year. Earnings per share jumped 19% to $2.84. The iPhone 17 rollout has been crushing it - driving 59% of total revenue with 23% YoY growth. They're even launching cheaper options now, the MacBook Neo and iPhone 17e at $599, which could expand their addressable market. Meanwhile, they've been raising dividends for 11 straight years and bought back $24.7 billion in stock just in Q1 alone. That's the kind of capital allocation you want to see.

Sure, people have criticized their AI strategy for being slow. But honestly, that might end up looking smart when you see how much other companies are burning on AI infrastructure. The iPhone demand is "staggering" according to their CEO, and that's really all that matters for their core business.

Now, Williams Companies is a different animal entirely. Founded in 1908, it's got serious pedigree in the energy infrastructure space. $93 billion market cap puts it in a completely different league than Apple, but it's absolutely a blue chip within its sector. The company handles about a third of all natural gas consumed in the U.S., with 33,000 miles of pipeline running entirely domestically.

What makes this company resilient is the structure - they operate on long-term, fee-based contracts. That means predictable cash flows that don't get hammered by oil price swings the way you'd think. Their 2025 numbers were solid: adjusted EBITDA up 9% to $7.8 billion, total revenue climbing 13.7% to $11.9 billion. EPS jumped 17.5% to $2.14. The stock's already up over 23% this year before last week's pullback.

The data center boom has been a tailwind too. All these new AI facilities need massive amounts of power, and natural gas plants are filling that gap. Add in a colder-than-usual winter in the eastern U.S. driving heating demand, and you've got genuine momentum behind the business.

What really caught my attention is their dividend track record - 52 consecutive years of payments. They've raised dividends for 8 straight years, including a 6% bump this year. Current yield is sitting around 2.7%, and their payout is only covered 1.4 times by adjusted funds from operations, which means they've got room to keep increasing it.

Here's the thing about both of these companies: when you get panic selling in blue chip stocks with fortress balance sheets and growing earnings, that's usually when you want to be paying attention. The geopolitical situation will likely resolve, but these businesses will keep grinding. Morgan Stanley's research shows that after similar shocks, the S&P 500 typically recovers to be up around 2% in a month, 6% in six months, and 8% in a year.

Neither of these stocks needed to fall as hard as they did. That's just fear talking, not fundamentals.