Stock Market Today: Dow Leads in a Mixed May Start for Stocks

The Dow Jones Industrial Average kicked off the month with a 0.7% gain to 34,113 on Monday that came despite a weaker-than-expected Institute of Supply Management manufacturing report.

Supply bottlenecks resulted in an April reading of 60.7 – a slower rate of expansion than March's 64.7 reading indicated, but expansion nonetheless.

"Although the composite was a fair bit below expectations (Barclays 64.5; consensus 65.0), the decline comes off of a robust March reading that was the highest since 1983," says Barclays economist Jonathan Millar. "Indeed, components of the composite continue to point to very strong growth, which comes as no surprise, given highly favorable demand conditions amid fiscal stimulus, easing of social distancing restrictions, and ongoing progress in vaccinations."

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We're glad to see that at least some investors heeded our advice to ignore the urge to "sell in May and go away." But stocks weren't exactly up across the board. The Nasdaq Composite (-0.5% to 13,895) struggled, thanks to weakness in mega-cap tech and tech-esque names such as Tesla (TSLA, -3.5%), Amazon.com (AMZN, -2.3%) and Salesforce.com (CRM, -2.9%).

"For the first time in a while there is a clear value/cyclical bias while growth/tech is under pressure," says Michael Reinking, senior market strategist for the New York Stock Exchange. "Tech wobbled last week despite blowout numbers from the mega-cap stocks. This is especially concerning as the rate environment remains in check."

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Other action in the stock market today:

• The S&P 500 gained 0.3% to 4,192.
• The small-cap Russell 2000 also finished in the black, up 0.5% to 2,277.
• Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, +1.7%) held its 2021 annual shareholder meeting this weekend. Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett and Executive Vice Chairman Charlie Munger addressed a number of topics, including trimming Berkshire's stake in Apple (AAPL) in Q4 2020. "It was probably a mistake," said Buffett, adding that AAPL's stock price is a "huge, huge bargain" given how "indispensable" the company's products are to people. Also of note: Berkshire grew fourth-quarter operating income by 20%, to $5.9 billion, while cash grew 5% to $145.4 billion.
• Domino's Pizza (DPZ, +2.6%) was a notable winner today. The pizza chain revealed an accelerated stock buyback program, saying in a regulatory filing that it will pay Barclays $1 billion in cash for roughly 2 million DPZ shares.
• U.S. crude oil futures jumped 1.4% to end at $64.49 per barrel.
• Gold futures snapped a four-day losing streak, adding 1.4% to settle at $1,791.80 an ounce.
• The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) declined 2.3% to 18.18.
• Bitcoin prices improved by 1.1% to $57,530.32. More impressive was the 18.6% improvement in Ethereum, to $3,300.64 (Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day; prices reported here are as of 4 p.m. each trading day.)

Another Big Week of Reports ... And Dividends

What should investors be looking forward to this week?

On Thursday and Friday, we'll get the latest weekly unemployment filings and April jobs data, respectively, but throughout the week, another heaping helping of earnings reports, anchored by the likes of General Motors (GM), Pfizer (PFE), Under Armour (UAA) and PayPal (PYPL).

And given that many companies tend to synchronize their dividend and buyback actions with their earnings reports, you also can expect plenty of news on the dividend-growth front.

In some cases, those raises might be token upticks meant to secure current or future membership in the Dividend Aristocrats. But others are bound to compete with this year's most explosive payout hikes – improvements of 15%, 20% or even 30% that drastically change the income aspect of current shareholders' investments. Ideally, of course, investors want the best of both worlds: income longevity and generosity.

These 10 dividend stocks just might fit the bill. This group of mostly blue-chip household names offer a strong history of payout increases, a sharp level of recent hikes compared to their peers, and the operational quality to continue affording these annual raises.