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10 Worst Dow Stocks To Buy (ready to edit)

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Yahoo Finance reported on November 5 that the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 3.4%, or more than 1,800 points, while the S&P 500 fell 4.4% and the Nasdaq Composite sank 5.5% into correction territory. Chip stocks took the brunt of the damage, as the leading AI chipmaker fell 9% to pace Dow decliners and another chip designer plunged 17%, the outlet reported.

The slide erased the gains from a day earlier, when the Dow had jumped nearly 1,600 points after Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress, Yahoo Finance wrote on November 4. Even so, the blue-chip index finished Thursday just 1.9% below its record closing high of 54,349 from early August.

The Dow’s Safe-Haven Run Cracks

For most of the week, the Dow had looked like the sheltered corner of the market. Yahoo Finance reported on November 2 that the Dow edged up 0.4% while the Nasdaq dropped roughly 1% as investors rotated out of technology names and into consumer cyclical and financial services shares. One household consumer brand has divided opinion lately, and we covered why a well-known TV host is staying away from the sneaker maker after losing money on it.

On Thursday, that cushion gave way, as the focus turned to what a Democratic Congress could mean for the AI buildout, and for the data centers driving it in particular. Data center power and infrastructure stocks fell by double digits, and the Nasdaq 100 was recently more than 10% below its October closing high. The reversal was fast. Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at an equity research firm, pointed out that the VIX volatility index posted its biggest one-day jump in more than two years. It took the Nasdaq just six minutes to erase its entire post-election rally.

A Jobs Report Steadies the Tape

Friday brought a partial rebound. Yahoo Finance reported on November 6 that the US added 165,000 jobs in October, and the Nasdaq gained 1.9% while the S&P 500 rose 1% and the Dow added 0.1%. You might also be interested in reading our piece on why a billionaire money manager and a TV host both still like the iPhone maker.

The stronger jobs data lifted Treasury yields and kept Federal Reserve policy at the center of market attention, Reuters reported on November 6, as the price-weighted index of 30 major US companies held roughly flat.

Our Methodology

For this article, we used Finviz to screen the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and calculated each stock’s average upside potential, based on analysts’ average price target. We picked the 10 stocks with the lowest upside potential and ranked them in descending order of upside. We also list each stock’s short interest and number of hedge fund holders as of Q2 2026.

Note: All data was sourced on November 6, 2026.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Insider Monkey’s quarterly newsletter strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 612% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 375 percentage points (see more details here).

10 Worst Dow Stocks To Buy

10. Visa (NYSE:V)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 194

Short Interest: 1.21%

Average Upside Potential: 7%

A 15% revenue gain at Visa’s scale explains why it keeps showing up on lists of dependable compounders. Payments volume, cross-border volume and processed transactions all kept growing in the fiscal fourth quarter, and cross-border volume was the fastest of the three at 14%, so international spending is adding to a business already driven by everyday card use.

Net revenue growth was broad, with service revenue, data processing revenue and international transaction revenue all higher for the year. Earnings kept pace with the top line, and the board raised the quarterly dividend 16%. Visa also kept buying back stock in the quarter and ended it with a large repurchase authorization still available, which gives management room to keep trimming the share count while it funds growth.

Chief Executive Ryan McInerney called fiscal 2026 a milestone year. The next step is a planned $2.4 billion cash purchase of BioCatch, an anti-fraud provider, which management expects to close by the end of the fiscal second quarter of 2027. The deal would add fraud-detection tools to the security services Visa already sells to banks and merchants, widening the set of services that earn fees beyond moving money.

Learn more from our analysis on Visa (NYSE:V) here: Visa (V): Are Bigger Client Rebates Worth the Valuation?

9. IBM (NYSE:IBM)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 74

Short Interest: 2.11%

Average Upside Potential: 5%

IBM’s third quarter showed its software business speeding up. Software revenue rose 8%, led by Red Hat’s hybrid cloud products and a 19% jump in data products, and the company said revenue growth accelerated and exceeded expectations for the period.

The profit side improved too. Operating pre-tax margin widened, and free cash flow of $3.0 billion was higher than a year earlier. Management responded by raising its full-year free cash flow outlook to growth of more than $1 billion, while holding its revenue growth range steady at the level it gave earlier in the year.

Chief Executive Arvind Krishna said clients are now using what he calls Super Intelligence to reshape entire operating models rather than solve narrow problems. Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh credited demand across the portfolio and strong operational execution for the quarter. Infrastructure revenue and transaction processing software also rose, so the improvement reached beyond a single product line. Hybrid cloud, data, and transaction processing software all grew, while consulting held steady. Operating cash flow also rose from a year earlier, and IBM kept returning cash to shareholders through its dividend.

Our analysis on IBM (NYSE:IBM) is available here: IBM (IBM) Saw Mainframes Fall 42%. Is That Already Priced In at 18 Times Earnings?

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