All 30 Dow Jones Stocks Ranked: Buy, Sell or Hold?

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last updated 20 November 2024

You can't beat Dow Jones stocks for stability and defense in a down market. By the same token, the blue chip average won't always keep up in a rising market.

Case in point: the broader S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite were both up about 24% on a price basis for the year to date through late November. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, by comparison, very much lagged the pack. The elite bastion of 30 mostly more mature industry leaders delivered comparatively poky price upside of 15%.

You can blame the Magnificent 7 stocks for much of the Dow's underperformance. Of the mega-cap tech stocks driving the majority of the bull market's returns this year, only Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL) and Amazon.com (AMZN) could be found in the blue-chip average until mid-November. Replacing buy-and-hold bust Intel (INTC) with Nvidia (NVDA) should certainly help the Dow going forward. The fact that the Dow is weighted by price rather than market cap is another reason it's lagging the other main benchmarks.

The current state of concentrated returns notwithstanding, it's important to know the Dow's recent underperformance isn't all that abnormal. Half of the average's components are low-beta stocks. That means they tend to lag in up markets, but hold up better when everything is selling off. This low-beta skew can actually be quite advantageous to long-term investors.

After all, as bright a time as it's been for equity investors, downside risks very much remain. Economists generally expect growth to slow, and some surveys put the odds of recession hitting in the next year at 33%. Meanwhile, The New York Fed's yield-curve model assigns a 42% probability to the U.S. entering a recession over the next 12 months.

Should such a change in market fortunes come to pass ... well, that's where Dow Jones stocks come in.

Dow Jones stocks ranked

This collection of industry-leading companies and dividend growth stalwarts with their fortress-like balance sheets can offer relative stability in tempestuous market times. From the best Dow dividend stocks to the most widely held blue chip stocks, components of the industrial average occupy top spots in the portfolios of hedge funds and billionaire investors. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), in particular, is a huge fan of select Dow stocks.

To get a sense of which Dow Jones stocks Wall Street recommends at an increasingly uncertain time for equities, we screened the DJIA by analysts' consensus recommendations, from worst to first, using data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Here's how the ratings system works: S&P surveys analysts' stock calls and scores them on a five-point scale, where 1.0 equals a Strong Buy and 5.0 is a Strong Sell. Scores between 3.5 and 2.5 translate into Hold recommendations. Scores higher than 3.5 equate to Sell ratings, while scores equal to or below 2.5 mean that analysts, on average, rate shares at Buy. The closer a score gets to 1.0, the higher conviction the Buy recommendation.

In other words, lower scores are better than higher scores.

Please note that Nvidia replaced INTC in the gauge in November, while paint maker Sherwin-Williams (SHW) was swapped in for chemicals company Dow (DOW). Amazon.com (AMZN) was added to the Dow in late February, replacing Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA).

See the table below for analysts' consensus recommendations on all 30 Dow Jones stocks, per S&P Global Market Intelligence, as of November 20, 2024.

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Analysts' top Dow Jones stocks to buy
Company (Ticker)	Analysts' Consensus Recommendation Score	Analysts' Consensus Recommendation
Caterpillar (CAT)	2.80	Hold
International Business Machines (IBM)	2.75	Hold
Travelers (TRV)	2.72	Hold
American Express (AXP)	2.71	Hold
Amgen (AMGN)	2.39	Buy
Honeywell International (HON)	2.35	Buy
Cisco Systems (CSCO)	2.32	Buy
JPMorgan Chase (JPM)	2.32	Buy
Verizon Communications (VZ)	2.28	Buy
3M (MMM)	2.26	Buy
Sherwin-Williams Company (SHW)	2.24	Buy
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)	2.21	Buy
Nike (NKE)	2.18	Buy
Boeing (BA)	2.14	Buy
Procter & Gamble (PG)	2.07	Buy
McDonald's (MCD)	2.06	Buy
Goldman Sachs (GS)	2.05	Buy
Chevron (CVX)	2.04	Buy
Walt Disney (DIS)	1.97	Buy
Home Depot (HD)	1.93	Buy
Apple (AAPL)	1.89	Buy
Coca-Cola (KO)	1.88	Buy
Salesforce (CRM)	1.77	Buy
Visa (V)	1.76	Buy
Merck (MRK)	1.70	Buy
Walmart (WMT)	1.55	Buy
UnitedHealth Group (UNH)	1.46	Strong Buy
Microsoft (MSFT)	1.42	Strong Buy
Amazon.com (AMZN)	1.37	Strong Buy
Nvidia (NVDA)	1.29	Strong Buy

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Dan Burrows is Kiplinger's senior investing writer, having joined the august publication full time in 2016.

A long-time financial journalist, Dan is a veteran of SmartMoney, MarketWatch, CBS MoneyWatch, InvestorPlace and DailyFinance. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Consumer Reports, Senior Executive and Boston magazine, and his stories have appeared in the New York Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News and Investor's Business Daily, among other publications. As a senior writer at AOL's DailyFinance, Dan reported market news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and hosted a weekly video segment on equities.

Once upon a time – before his days as a financial reporter and assistant financial editor at legendary fashion trade paper Women's Wear Daily – Dan worked for Spy magazine, scribbled away at Time Inc. and contributed to Maxim magazine back when lad mags were a thing. He's also written for Esquire magazine's Dubious Achievements Awards.

In his current role at Kiplinger, Dan writes about equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities, funds, macroeconomics, demographics, real estate, cost of living indexes and more.

Dan holds a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and a master's degree from Columbia University.

Disclosure: Dan does not trade stocks or other securities. Rather, he dollar-cost averages into cheap funds and index funds and holds them forever in tax-advantaged accounts.