🚀 These are YOUR Top Stocks for 2026!
What 90,000 Dividend Investors Are Buying for 2026 🧩
Peter Lynch is one of the best investors to ever live.
In just 13 years, he turned $18 million into over $14 billion.
That’s a return of 29.3% per year.
One of his secrets?
Turning over the most rocks.
I did something rare at the beginning of this year.
I sent out a poll to the 90,000 people who subscribe to this newsletter asking these three simple questions:
What are your top Dividend Growth stocks for 2026?
What are your top High Yield stocks for 2026?
What are your top funds/ETFs for 2026?
I heard back from many of you-
And in total, the Dividendology community submitted over 400 unique stocks and funds!
As we approach the midpoint of 2026, let’s review how the community picks have performed.
💎 The Top 5 Dividend Growth Stocks
Dividend growth stocks are the best friend of the long-term investor.
Why?
Because historically, they’ve provided outperformance while having less volatility-
All while eliminating sequence risk by paying you a growing stream of dividend income.
Let’s review what the top 5 dividend growth stock picks were from the Dividendology community at the beginning of 2026:
Microsoft (MSFT)
ASML (ASML)
Broadcom (AVGO)
UnitedHealth Group (UNH)
Mastercard (MA)
Here’s a closer look at each one:
The picks from the Dividendology community certainly had the characteristics of high quality dividend growers.
These companies are growing earnings & dividends at a high rate, while generating exceptional return on invested capital.
What’s even more impressive?
The fact that these companies on average have outperformed the S&P 500 so far year to date.
Dividendology Community Top 5 DG Picks: +15.66%
S&P 500: 11.02%
This is a great example of how just a few great investments can drive meaningful outperformance.
🍬 Wisdom of Crowds
Our community stock picks outperforming the S&P 500 is a great example of ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’.
What do I mean by this?
A classic example of the wisdom of crowds is guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar.
Individually, most people’s guesses are wrong.
Some guesses come in way too high, others way too low.
But when you average all the guesses together, the crowd’s average often ends up surprisingly close to the true number.
As the Dividendology brand has grown into one of the largest dividend growth and high yield investing communities, we will continue to leverage our community size to take advantage of the wisdom of crowds.
💰 The Top 5 High Yield Stocks
One of the goals of Dividendology over the last year has been to prove that high yield doesn’t automatically mean high risk.
So far, that goal has gone incredibly well.
We launched our real money High yield Portfolio that currently yields 9.3% and has outperformed the market on a time weighted basis.
Not only is this portfolio outperforming, but it:
Has had lower volatility (standard deviation)
Has had a lower maximum drawdown
Has had a stronger Sharpe Ratio
The Sharpe Ratio is an important one.
The Sharpe Ratio is a way of measuring how much return you’re getting for every unit of risk you take.
Basically, we took on less risk than the S&P 500, while still experiencing better returns.
An amazing start.
How have our communities top 5 high yield picks turned out so far in 2026?
Let’s review what the top picks were, as well as what their yield was at the start of the year:
The average dividend yield of these picks at the beginning of the year was close to 7%.
It’s difficult to compare metrics for these High Yield stocks, as we have 4 different asset classes on this list:
Traditional stocks
REITs
BDCs
MLPs
The reality of the market is that you often have to turn to alternative asset classes to find high yield opportunities-
And the way you analyze each of these different asset classes is radically different from traditional stocks.
So how has the communities picks turned out so far?
The average YTD total return of these 5 high-yield picks is currently 6.97%.
A very nice return for a group of high yield stocks.
Main Street Capital (MAIN) is bringing this average down considerably.
Without MAIN, these picks would’ve outperformed.
The BDC market as a whole has seen a considerable drawdown over the last year, with the VanEck BDC Income ETF (BIZD) down over 20%.
This has been primarily due to two reasons that I’ve been warning readers of over the last year:
Declining rates leading to lower net investment income
Overexposure to software companies in their portfolio
The BDC market has already changed dramatically over the last few months, as I pointed out just a few weeks ago.
Our High Yield Portfolio has certainly benefited from selecting some great high yielding companies, but we’ve also benefited from avoiding the BDC market.
As the market environment changes, we will continue to take a closer look into the BDC market to see if any opportunities arise.
🪨 Turning Over The Most Rocks
“The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game” - Peter Lynch
With the Dividendology community submitting over 400 unique stocks and funds, there are plenty of rocks for us to continue turning over.
That’s the edge of our community.
If you want even more out of the community and access to all the features mentioned below, you can join here:
See you soon!
Dividendology
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