Investors Hope the Dogs of the Dow Can Find Their Bite

The Dogs of the Dow weren’t the best in show last year, but the recent rally in beaten-down corners of the stock market is giving hope to fans of the popular contrarian investment strategy.

The approach calls for buying the 10 stocks with the highest dividend yields of the 30 Dow components at the beginning of a year—the Dogs of the Dow—and holding them over the next 12 months. The group of stocks is rebalanced at the end of each year to maintain an investment in the top 10 dividend payers.