Dogs of the Dow

It’s a New Year and time for the Dogs of the Dow, which is one of the longest running and easiest to implement strategies.  The Dogs of the Dow is a stock picking strategy devoted to selecting the highest dividend paying stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  Yield is the annual dividend from a company divided by its stock price. The higher yields of the “Dogs” signal that their stock prices have declined the most among the Dow’s 30 blue-chip companies.  In essence, the goal of the strategy is to earn more dividend income and hope that the stocks also mount a comeback.  The Dogs are bought on the first day of the year and sold on the last day of the year. Traditionally, the Dogs of the Dow invests in the 10 highest yielding stocks; there is a variant, known as the “Small Dogs”, that invests in the 5 highest yielding and lowest priced stocks.  This column will follow the “Small Dogs”. This year’s Small Dogs are: ATT (symbol: T) Pfizer (symbol: PFE) General Electric (symbol: GE) Intel Corporation (symbol:INTC) CSCO: (symbol: CSCO) Here is a table showing the total returns for various calendar years ending December 31, 2011.  What should be noted is that this strategy is NOT protective during a bear market.  See the 2008 column. Of note, the traditional Dogs of the Dow (10 stocks) out performed the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 700 basis points in 2013. Dogs of the Dow Returns