It's said the best blue chip dividend stocks never go out of style. True, they might tend to lag in up markets, but they're also likely to hold up better when everything is selling off.
That defensive bias might just be what investors need amid an increasingly opaque outlook for equities.
After lagging the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite by about 16 percentage points on a total return basis in risk-on trading last year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is holding up better than its growthier benchmark in 2025.
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The elite bastion of 30 blue chip stocks was essentially flat for the year to date through late May, while the Nasdaq was still off by 2%.
Moreover, the Dow suffered a maximum drawdown of 12% when the market threw up in April. By comparison, the Nasdaq lost more than 20% at its spring nadir.
Although the very bluest of blue chip dividend stocks were collective laggards in 2024, their defensive aspects could come in handy over the next 12 months or so. After all, trade uncertainty has complicated the Federal Reserve's rate-cutting plans.
The economic outlook has deteriorated as well. Economists' median estimate puts the odds of recession over the next year at 40%. Separately, the New York Federal Reserve's yield-curve model assigns a 30% probability of recession over the next 12 months, up from 23% at the start of 2025.
Happily, Wall Street's top-rated blue chip dividend stocks – with their impregnable balance sheets and rivers of free cash flow – are well-positioned to generate income and deliver outperformance in the year ahead and beyond, analysts say.
How to find the best blue chip dividend stocks
In order to find the best blue chip dividend stocks to buy now, we started by screening all 30 Dow Jones stocks for Wall Street analysts' top-rated names.
Here's how the process works: S&P Global Market Intelligence surveys analysts' stock ratings and scores them on a five-point scale, where 1.0 equals Strong Buy and 5.0 means Strong Sell.
Any score of 2.5 or lower means that analysts, on average, rate the stock a Buy. The closer the score gets to 1.0, the stronger the Buy call. In other words, lower scores are better than higher scores.
The dividend yield on the Dow has fallen below 2%, so we further limited our screen to Dow dividend stocks with yields of more than 2% as of May 27.
And so, without further ado, below please find the sevene Dow dividend stocks yielding more than 2% that analysts like best. Note well that the top-rated stock is one of the biggest positions in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio.
Company (Ticker) | Dividend Yield (%) | Analysts' Consensus Recommendation Score | Analysts' Consensus Recommendation |
Coca-Cola (KO) | 2.8 | 1.65 | Buy |
Home Depot (HD) | 2.5 | 1.82 | Buy |
UnitedHealth Group (UNH) | 2.8 | 1.85 | Buy |
Merck (MRK) | 4.2 | 1.96 | Buy |
Procter & Gamble (PG) | 2.6 | 2.00 | Buy |
Cisco Systems (CSCO) | 2.6 | 2.08 | Buy |
Chevron (CVX) | 5.0 | 2.13 | Buy |
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