Only 8 Of The 30 Dow Jones Stocks Were Positive In The First Half Of 2022: Chevron Leads, But Who Else Was Up?

The U.S. stock market had a rough start to 2022 with a market correction hitting stocks and many indexes seeing their worst performances in decades.

What Happened: The S&P 500, as tracked by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, saw a decline of 20.8% in the first half of 2022. This marked the largest first half decline for the index since 1970.

The Dow Jones, which is tracked by the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust DIA, ended the first half of the year down 15.5%.

The index includes 30 of the country’s largest corporations split among a series of diverse sectors.

Here are the eight stocks in the Dow Jones that are positive year-to-date in 2022 through June 30:

• Chevron Corp CVX: +23.4%
• Merck & Co., Inc. MRK: +19.0%
• Amgen, Inc. AMGN: +8.2%
• Travelers Companies TRV: +8.1%
• Coca-Cola Co KO: +6.3%
• International Business Machines IBM: +5.6%
• Johnson & Johnson JNJ: +3.8%
• UnitedHealth Group Inc UNH: +2.2%

Related Link: 7 Best Dow Jones Stocks To Buy

What Happened: Similar to the S&P 500 gainers for the first half of the year, an oil company led the way with Chevron up 23.4% for the year.

The list of eight stocks show some diversity across industries such as energy, consumer goods, technology and healthcare.

The stocks that saw gains in the first half of 2022 could also be showing the trend of investors searching for value companies instead of high-growth names. The companies on the list have been around for years, have shown revenue and earnings growth, and pay out dividends.

Of the eight stocks with gains in the first half of the year, four pay dividend yields of 3% or more and seven pay dividend yields of 2% or more.

On the flip side, the biggest decliners of the Dow Jones components in the first half of 2022 were:

• Walt Disney Co DIS: -39.1%
• Nike Inc NKE: -38.8%
• Salesforce Inc CRM: -35.1%
• Home Depot HD: -33.9%
• Cisco Systems Inc CSCO: -32.7%

Six of the Dow Jones components had declines of 30% or more in the first half of 2022 and 13 had declines of 20% or more. A total of 18 of the 30 components lost 10% or more in their share price in the first half of 2022.

Of the bottom six components in year-to-date return, three pay no dividends and the other three pay 1.2%, 2.8% and 3.6%. This could signal the continued trend of value stocks over growth stocks, even when it comes to some of the largest companies in the country.

Photo: Tada Images via Shutterstock