WD-40 Company (WDFC): One of the Overlooked Dividend Stocks to Buy Now

In caller times, dividend investing—also known arsenic equity income—has fallen retired of favor. Once a wide followed and dependable strategy, it has gradually been overshadowed. The beardown superior gains delivered by maturation stocks look to person shifted investors’ attraction distant from the much unchangeable and accordant returns that travel with dividend-paying stocks.

However, the caller marketplace downturn, combined with the economical interaction of Trump’s commercialized policies, has brought renewed attraction and entreaty to these types of stocks. The S&P Dividend Aristocrats Index, which tracks the show of companies with astatine slightest 25 consecutive years of dividend growth, has fallen by a small implicit 2% since the commencement of 2025, compared with a 6% autumn successful the broader market.

Dividend stocks person seen mixed results implicit antithetic economical cycles—performing good successful immoderate downturns and falling down successful others. They mostly outpaced the broader marketplace during the recessions starting successful July 1981, March 2001, and December 2007. However, their show lagged during the shorter recessions successful 1980 and 2020. This was chiefly owed to dividend cuts from large firms, on with constricted vulnerability to fast-growing tech names. For context, the steepest driblet successful dividends came during the 2008–09 fiscal crisis, erstwhile S&P dividend payouts declined by 24%, though investors inactive received 76% of their income.

That said, portion the anticipation of dividend reductions is simply a valid interest and a imaginable drawback of this strategy, it shouldn’t beryllium a crushed to place dividend stocks altogether. When incorporated thoughtfully, they tin inactive play a invaluable relation successful a well-rounded concern portfolio.

M&G Investments noted that dividends service arsenic much than conscionable income—they besides awesome a company’s fiscal wellness and management’s confidence. While short-term marketplace returns often hinge connected banal valuations, dividends play a overmuch much important relation successful driving equity returns implicit longer periods, specified arsenic 10 oregon 20 years. The study besides mentioned, citing Bloomberg’s data, that dividends play a captious relation successful semipermanent returns. Over the past 25 years, astir fractional of the full gains from US stocks person travel from reinvested dividends and the powerfulness of compounding. During this period, the broader marketplace delivered an mean yearly instrumentality of 7.4%, with 55% attributed to rising banal prices and the remaining 45% coming from reinvested dividend income.