Dogs of the Dow: Definition, List of Stocks, Performance

What Are Dogs of the Dow?

"Dogs of the Dow" is an investment strategy that attempts to beat the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) each year by leaning portfolios toward high-yield investments. The general concept is to allocate money to the 10 highest dividend-yielding, blue-chip stocks among the 30 components of the DJIA. This strategy requires rebalancing at the beginning of each calendar year.

Understanding Dogs of the Dow

Because the Dow is one of the oldest and most widely followed indexes in the world—and generally is seen as a barometer for the broader market—it is not uncommon for market strategists to base investing techniques on some components of the DJIA. The main reason to follow the Dogs is that it presents a straightforward formula designed to perform roughly in line with the Dow.

Though not an entirely new concept, this strategy first became a popular fixture in 1991, following the publication of Michael B. O’Higgins’ book, Beating the Dow. In the book, O’Higgins also coined the name “Dogs of the Dow.”

Dogs of the Dow Methodology

Dogs of the Dow relies on the premise that blue-chip companies do not alter their dividend to reflect trading conditions and, therefore, the dividend is a measure of the average worth of the company. In contrast, the stock price does fluctuate throughout the business cycle.

This should mean that companies with a high dividend relative to stock price are near the bottom of their business cycle, so their stock price likely would increase faster than companies with low dividend yields. In this scenario, an investor reinvesting in high-dividend-yielding companies annually would hope to outperform the overall market.

There are many ways to purchase these securities. You can hand-pick individual stocks and build your own portfolio, invest directly in the Dow through exchange-traded funds (ETFs), or you can follow the Dogs of the Dow strategy—whose stocks offer better yields than the Dow as a whole. Often, in fact, the Dogs have been able to outperform the Dow over the course of the year.

The 2023 Dogs of the Dow are listed below.

How the Dogs of the Dow Strategy Works

The idea is to make stock picking somewhat easy and relatively safe, the latter because the universe is limited to blue-chip stocks. As a tactic, Dogs of the Dow goes like this—after the stock market closes on the last day of the year, select the 10-highest dividend-yielding stocks in the DJIA.

Then, on the first trading day of the new year, invest an equal dollar amount in each of them. Hold the portfolio for a year, then repeat the process at the beginning of each subsequent year.

For most nonprofessionals, though, investing is never that simple, especially with the myriad of strategies out there. So, it behooves the average individual investor to understand what they are doing with their money.

Hence, Dogs of the Dow tools abound. Just browse the Internet to see Dogs of the Dow opinions, commentary, analyses, calculators, charts, forecasts, and stock screeners. There's even a Dogs of the Dow website.

Because this is intended to be a low-maintenance, long-term strategy that mimics the performance of the DJIA, it shouldn't be surprising that the long-term results are similar. There have been years when the Dow has outperformed the Dogs and vice-versa, but its performance over time is impressive.

Sample Performance Comparison

The Dogs of the Dow experienced greater losses during the financial crisis of 2008 than the DJIA, but in the decade and more that followed it only slightly underperformed the bellwether index.

From 2013 to 2023, the Dogs of the Dow had a trailing total return of 10.02% compared to a 11.48% trailing total return of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA).

The cumulative effect of this performance year after year shows that despite losing more in 2008 than the index, the strategy made up ground and turned in a respectable performance for the decade with a very similar result to the DJIA. In the last five years, from 2018 to 2023, however, the Dogs have trailed the DJIA with a wider gap, turning in trailing total returns of 5.29% compared to the DJIA's trailing total return of 8.39%.

The Bottom Line

Though the Dow of Dogs has slightly underperformed the DJIA in the past 10 years, it still works as a good dividend strategy if investors are looking for fixed payments in their portfolio. If investors are looking for pure returns, then the DJIA or the S&P 500 work as a better overall investment for the long term.