The Dow’s Worst-Performing Stocks of 2026. Here’s the 1 I’d Buy for 2027.
Even with a couple of recent (albeit short-lived) setbacks, it’s been a pretty solid year for blue chip stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up a little more than 9% since the end of 2025.
Not every Dow name has done nearly as well, however. In fact, some of them are well into the red for the year despite the broader bullish tide. In one of these bearish cases, though, this year’s weakness is a buying opportunity for the year ahead.
Laggards
McDonald’s (MCD -2.52%) got the year off to a good start, adding to 2025’s gains. Things soured in a big way beginning in March, as persistent inflation finally eroded its core customers’ ability to continue visiting its restaurants.
As CEO Christopher Kempczinski explained about the economy during May’s first-quarter earnings call, “It’s certainly not improving, and it may be getting a little bit worse.” This was evident in Q2’s same-store sales growth of only 1.3% too, which fell well short of estimates.
MCD – McDonald’s
$275.07-$7.11 (-2.52%)
NYSE · As of 11:03 AM ET 11/11/26
Although up somewhat since early October — and boosted by the recent release of encouraging third-quarter results — the stock’s still down a little more than 10% year-to-date.
Salesforce (CRM +1.56%) may be one of the Dow’s least conspicuous and least surprising laggards of 2026. No disastrous quarterly numbers that flesh out a bearish narrative. Just a slow grind stemming from the proliferation of AI-powered computer-coding platforms that could replace the need for this company’s customer management solution. A handful of relatively expensive acquisitions is also weighing on investors’ minds. All told, CRM stock is down 13% since the end of 2025.
Like Salesforce, the reason International Business Machines (IBM +0.03%) stock is down nearly 14% year-to-date isn’t exactly a secret. There’s a lack of demand for its specific artificial intelligence solutions, causing a second-quarter sales miss and lowered full-year guidance, which led to a catastrophic sell-off in July. Indeed, the 25% slump on July 14 was the ticker’s biggest-ever single-day stumble. While shares have since cut that loss in half, they’re still well in the red.
For the better part of 2025, it looked as if aircraft company Boeing (BA -0.06%) had put most of its bigger woes — like the design and engineering flaws of some of its newer jets — behind it. Shares gained 25% that year, in fact.
The organization isn’t quite through as many of its issues as it seemed it was just a short while ago, however. Just last month, the company pushed its $10 billion annual free cash flow target all the way back to 2029 due to a slower-than-expected ramp-up in 737 jet production.
It’s still losing money in the meantime, too, reporting a third-quarter loss of $0.34 per share that brought its per-share loss through the first three quarters of the year to $1.30. Boeing’s stock is down 18% year-to-date.
Finally, extending the misery that began all the way back in early 2022, shares of sports apparel company Nike (NKE -1.85%) are down more than 36% since the beginning of 2026, logging a multi-year low last month, leaving it 77% below its late-2021 peak.
NKE – Nike
$37.96-$0.72 (-1.85%)
NYSE · As of 11:02 AM ET 11/11/26
The reason for this prolonged sell-off isn’t complicated. The brand name just doesn’t have the consumer cachet it used to, and the organization has made multiple strategic missteps during this stretch, such as scaling back its relationships with retail partners to focus more on direct-to-consumer sales.
And the winner is…
A stock worth owning is an even better buy when you can buy it at a discount. Not all discounted stocks, though, are necessarily worth stepping into. You could argue that most of these poorly performing Dow names are of the latter variety, and not worth buying into here — at least not yet.
There is one arguable exception, though. That’s McDonald’s (MCD -2.52%).
There’s no denying the fast-food restaurant chain just dropped the ball in the middle of the year when management sensed economic weakness was taking a growing toll on consumers’ spending power. It was never a lack of potential marketability, however. As Kempczinski conceded during August’s second-quarter earnings call, “although we’ve restored our overall value and affordability leadership, our restaurant level results show that execution was inconsistent across the system.” CFO Ian Borden added “We’ve already taken steps to simplify restaurant operations by eliminating several non-customer-facing activities over the remainder of the year so that our restaurant teams can focus on delivering a great experience for our customers.”
Image source: Getty Images.
And we’re already seeing evidence that these efforts are working. While the company’s U.S. same-store sales still fell 0.2% year over year in its recently ended Q3, investors are seeing the glass as half-full based on the fact that analysts were calling for a 0.5% dip. Increased order sizes also helped, although the big driver of the stock’s gain following the release of its third-quarter numbers was mostly the fact that adjusted earnings of $3.57 per share were up 11% from the year-ago comparison, handily topping expectations of $3.38.
There’s still work to be done, and much to be proven. The restaurant chain’s turnaround appears off to a good start, however, with analysts still calling for solid profit growth this year and next. Newcomers stepping in now will also be plugging into a respectable forward-looking dividend yield of just under 3%, making it worth the risk and wait.
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Source: www.fool.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.