My portfolio is down 5.1% over the last month. And if you’re a dividend growth investor looking for the best dividend stocks to buy during a market dip, I want to share exactly what I’m doing because I’m not panicking. I’m opening my brokerage app and buying more.
Before I get into the names, the mindset matters. I’ve been investing in dividend stocks for just under a decade. In that time, I’ve lived through real corrections, a proper COVID crash, and more fear-soaked headlines than I can count. And the pattern is always the same: investors who bought more during the scary part came out ahead. The ones who waited for certainty missed the recovery — because certainty arrived after prices had already moved.
That doesn’t mean blindly buying everything. I’m not adding to positions I don’t believe in just because they’re cheaper. I’m adding to businesses I already own, already understand, and can now buy at more attractive prices than a couple of months ago. That’s the whole framework.
So here are the three dividend stocks I’ve been adding over the last month, and why.
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Why Brookfield Infrastructure Is the Right Kind of Defensive Right Now
Brookfield Infrastructure (ticker: BIPC) owns regulated, contracted, inflation-linked infrastructure assets: utilities, rail, pipelines, ports, and, increasingly, data centres. These businesses generate cash flow regardless of what tariffs are doing or what the geopolitical headlines look like this week.
That defensive profile is exactly what I want when markets are this volatile. But what makes BIPC particularly interesting right now is that you’re not just getting defensiveness; you’re also getting meaningful exposure to the buildout of AI infrastructure. Management has been explicit that data centre investment is a key growth driver going into 2026 and beyond.
Since my last video on this one, the share price has dropped below $40, which pushes the forward dividend yield close to 5%. They’ve also delivered 17 consecutive years of annual distribution increases, which speaks to how they’ve managed the business through cycles.
The one number I’m watching is dividend cover as it sits at around 1.2 times funds from operations, which looks thin by conventional standards. But for infrastructure partnerships, where leverage is deliberately part of the model, that’s not unusual. It just means you need to keep an eye on how the underlying assets are performing. I’m comfortable with it, but I’m not ignoring it.
Why the Market Has Overreacted to HP Inc.
HP Inc. (ticker HPQ) is probably the most contrarian name on this list, and I know that. The stock sold off hard, and if you just read the headline from their last earnings report, you’d understand why. But I think the market’s reaction is short-sighted, and here’s why I’m building an entry position.
First, the underlying business is doing better than the sell-off suggests. HP beat revenue estimates for six consecutive quarters. Revenue was up 4% year over year, and free cash flow guidance for 2026 came in at $3 billion, up from $2.8 billion in 2025. They also raised their dividend for the tenth consecutive year since their 2015 separation from Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
The market punished the stock because 2026 earnings guidance came in below analyst expectations. Add in margin pressure from memory cost inflation and a tough consumer environment, and you’ve got enough to spook short-term holders.
But here’s how I’m thinking about it. The restructuring management is pushing through is the right thing to do for the long term, even if it’s painful in the short term. Memory cost inflation is cyclical and it won’t stay elevated forever. And the Windows 11 refresh cycle combined with AI PC adoption still has a meaningful runway ahead of it. At the current price, the yield sits above 6% with a payout ratio of around 44% — a well-covered dividend from a cash-generating business at a very low multiple.
The risk I’m watching is the print segment, which is genuinely in structural decline, and whether the AI PC cycle actually delivers on the timeline management is hoping for. Those are real uncertainties. But for a small entry position with a 6% starting yield, I think the risk-to-reward is good enough to take a seat at the table.
Why Texas Instruments Is a Long-Term Compounder Worth Adding on Pullbacks
Texas Instruments (Ticker TXN) is a position I’ve held for a while, and I’ve been adding more during this pullback. They make analogue and embedded processor chips: the semiconductors that go into industrial equipment, automotive systems, and data centre power management. Not the flashy AI chips everyone talks about. The ones that everything else depends on to actually function.
The Q4 2025 numbers were strong. Revenue was up 10% year over year to $4.4 billion. Cash flow hit $2.9 billion — a 96% increase from the prior year. Gross margin was around 56%. And the dividend track record is the thing I keep coming back to: 20 consecutive years of dividend growth, averaging 8% annually, without a single cut across two recessions, a pandemic, and multiple semiconductor cycles.
At current prices, the yield sits around 3%, which isn’t the highest number on this list. But growing at 8% annually, backed by genuine free cash flow growth, that yield-on-cost builds into something meaningful over time.
The payout ratio is the thing to watch as it’s currently running above 100%, which sounds alarming but has a straightforward explanation. Texas Instruments has been deliberately over-investing in manufacturing capacity for the last few years, building out domestic fabs ahead of customer demand. That capital intensity is starting to bottom out, and as the capacity fills with customer orders over 2026 and 2027, the earnings recovery thesis should play out. If industrial demand stays weaker for longer, that recovery takes longer. I’m patient with it because this is a top-quality business that I expect to still be in my portfolio in a decade.
The Bigger Point
What ties these three together isn’t just that they’re cheaper than they were; lots of things are cheaper right now. It’s that the underlying businesses haven’t changed. The infrastructure assets still generate regulated cash flows. HP is still producing free cash flow and raising its dividend. Texas Instruments is still growing and still compounding capital.
When Mr Market has a bad month and reprices those businesses down, the only question I’m asking is whether my thesis has changed and not whether the headlines are scary. The headlines are always scary during a pullback. That’s what a pullback is.
My portfolio being down 5.3% feels uncomfortable. But that discomfort is, I think, the price of the opportunity.
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Derek is a Irish-based Controls and Automation Engineer with over 10 years of experience in the industrial sector. His professional background provides a unique “boots-on-the-ground” perspective when analysing industrial, infrastructure, and energy companies like Schneider Electric, Eaton, and Siemens.
As a long-term dividend growth investor, Derek manages a six-figure, real-money portfolio focused on high-quality compounding machines across European and US markets. Since 2020, he has co-hosted the Dividend Talk Podcast, documenting over 280 episodes of research and market analysis with a commitment to radical transparency and “Quality-First” investing.
