This may be a great time to buy certain dividend stocks, including household names like Clorox and Verizon.

The 10-year Treasury yield is up to just over 4.5% from just under 4.2% to start the year, and a rising yield will often hold back the prices of dividend stocks.

Pushing the yield higher: some additional inflation because of the Iran War-driven oil price jump, and the possibility that the Fed will hike short-term interest rates at some point this year.

Buyers should come right back in again around these levels. The "real yield," or the 10-year yield minus the expected average annual rate of inflation for the coming 10 years, according to the St. Louis Fed, is roughly 1.9 percentage points. That means Treasury holders are earning that many more points of yield over expected inflation.

That's a healthy real return, especially given that the real yield has not gone much more than a couple tenths of a point above 2 points since before the financial crisis. That's all the more reason to believe buyers will soon rush in, as they look to lock in the solid returns.

"We continue to expect bond yields to fall as the year progresses and believe that current elevated yields offer an opportunity to secure appealing portfolio income," write strategists at UBS global wealth management.

As bond yields fall, prices rise and bonds become less attractive. That makes dividend stocks look enticing, bringing in buyers and supporting the share prices.

So we screened for stocks with dividend yields of 5% or greater but that have not cut their dividend payments in the past decade.

But the kicker is that investors can rely on those dividends with some confidence. The companies on the screen are usually positioned to either maintain or increase their payments, which boosts the annual yield, removes some concern about a dividend cut, and even leaves the door open to stock price gains.

Many of these companies are growing their profits -- but are certainly not trading at expensive valuations.

The other advantage of buying these stocks is that they're safer than tech stocks. Sure, some investors may buy the recent dip in that sector, but volatility in those names has increased. Why take the risk of buying more tech right now if there are safer dividend names that could provide a solid total return?

The screen, from Dow Jones market data, turned up household names such as Clorox, Pfizer, and Comcast.

We zeroed in on a few select names: those where analysts see earnings growth both this year and next year (providing potential stock gains), and that are in sectors that are less sensitive to the economy, shielding the earnings from taking a hit in the case of an economic slowdown.

Those names are:

   -- Altria (consumer staples) 
 
   -- Verizon Communications (telecom) 
 
   -- Realty Income, (real estate investment trust, or REIT) 
 
   -- NNN REIT $(REIT)$ 
 
   -- Getty Realty (REIT) 

Consider Realty Income. It saw just about 5% annual growth in funds from operations per share, the preferred metric in REIT land, in the decade ended in 2025 according to FactSet. If growth continues apace, the stock rises in line with the growth, and shares yield 6.7% in dividends, the annual total return would come out to almost 12% -- likely with less volatility than tech stocks.

That's not a bad deal.

Write to Jacob Sonenshine at jacob.sonenshine@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 10, 2026 15:16 ET (19:16 GMT)

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