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Created in 1896 by Wall Street Journal cofounder Charles Dow, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is America’s oldest stock market index, but that’s not the only thing that makes it stand out among its peers. It’s also smaller than most other indexes, comprising just 30 blue-chip companies, and the way it’s constructed (and deconstructed and reconstructed) is also unique. The composition of most other bellwether indexes — i.e., the stocks they include — is standardized, with fairly simple criteria determining which companies end up in the index and which don’t. The S&P 500, for instance, includes the 500 largest American companies by market capitalization, assuming they meet the index’s other inclusion criteria (profitability requirements, float requirements, etc.). It is managed by an oversight committee that meets quarterly to rebalance it and ensure its composition aligns with its inclusion criteria.The Dow also has inclusion criteria, but they are significantly less specific, and when it comes to which companies make the cut, the decision ultimately rests with just five people, known collectively as the “averages committee.” And because of the Dow’s small size and relatively loose inclusion criteria, the averages committee has far more decision-making power than the committees that oversee more standardized indexes like the S&P 500. Here’s everything you need to know about the averages committee and how they decide which stocks to add to and drop from the Dow. What is the Dow’s averages committee? The Dow Jones Industrial Average is designed to serve as a benchmark for the U.S. stock market and economy at large by tracking the collective prices of 30 mature, blue-chip companies that together represent the best of the industries that make up the American economy.The Dow’s averages committee is responsible for ensuring that the index’s composition remains true to this purpose by dropping companies that no longer fit these criteria and replacing them with companies that do. Related: What happens when a stock splits in the Dow Jones Industrial Average?The averages committee includes only five people — three representatives from S&P Dow Jones Indices (the LLC behind both the Dow and the S&P 500) and two representatives from the Wall Street Journal (the financial news outlet founded by Charles Dow). These five individuals work together to monitor the health and viability of the companies in the Dow and make adjustments when necessary to maintain the index’s continuity and viability as a benchmark. What criteria must a stock meet to be included in the Dow? When choosing a stock to include in the Dow, the averages committee has quite a bit of leeway, though certain criteria are strongly considered, which narrows the pool of candidates to a more manageable size.To be considered for the Dow, a company must …Be headquartered and incorporated in the U.S.Be a non-transportation, non-utility stock included in the S&P 500 Have a good reputation and a history of sustained growth Have a large number of investorsRelated: Dow Jones’ revolving door: What happens to a stock after it’s dropped from the DJIA?What other factors does the averages committee consider when adding or dropping a stock from the Dow? In addition to the above criteria, the averages committee also considers the following questions when considering adding a stock to the DJIA: Is this company a leader in its industry? Does it have a history of increasing dividend payments to shareholders? Will its inclusion help the index accurately represent the sector balance of the U.S. economy? Is its stock price appropriate for its weighting in the index? (The DJIA is price-weighted, which is unusual, so stock prices — which can be arbitrary — must be considered to avoid weighting problems.)Related: The Dow’s best dividend stocks: A shortlist for income investorsWhy is the Dow’s averages committee different from other stock index oversight committees? Because the Dow’s inclusion criteria are far looser and less standardized than those of, say, the S&P 500, the averages committee holds quite a bit of decision-making power, especially since the DJIA is such a frequently cited benchmark in financial and economic news. In a way, the Dow has become something of an “all-star team” of American stocks, and its small size makes a company’s inclusion a sought-after accolade.While most other indexes are “constructed” according to a relatively strict set of criteria, the Dow is “curated,” with factors such as reputation, investor popularity, and industry leadership influencing the committee’s decisions. With so many healthy, mature companies to choose from, the averages committee’s choices aren’t always easy, and when they drop a stock from the Dow’s ranks and replace it with a new one, both companies tend to receive heightened interest and scrutiny from investors — retail and institutional alike. When a stock is dropped from the Dow, it can signal to investors that the company’s growth has slowed or stalled, or that it is losing cultural or economic relevance. When a company is added to the Dow, it can signal that it has transformed from a rising star to an established sector leader and a mainstay in the American economy.

Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses how family members and caregivers can connect with loved one’s with dementia with University of Alabama Birmingham’s Andrew Duxbury, MD.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkJoining me now is Dr. Andrew Duxbury at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Doctor, so great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning.It’s a pleasure to be here. I am so excited because dementia is prominent in our society. And I want to take a step back and ask, in terms of relating to people with dementia, I would imagine it’s pretty difficult for caregivers, for family members to have that interaction with a loved one that’s kind of going in and out of their memories.Andrew Duxbury, MD, University of Alabama BirminghamWell, the thing that I always try to teach families in regards to communicating with someone with dementia is that their reality is different than ours because their brain works differently than ours and reality is strictly what our brain tells us it is. Therefore, our worlds intersect, but they do not overlap. And therefore, the important thing is to try to figure out how to stay as much as possible at the intersect together as you can, but that when they’re in their part of their world that you cannot visit or you’re in our reality that they cannot visit, that it’s okay.And it’s just a matter of trying to come around to where the intersect is present again.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkSo it’s really important to have those expectations going in. I would imagine, doctor, this is really hard for families because they’re so used to seeing their loved ones as they were, not as they are.Andrew Duxbury, MD, University of Alabama BirminghamThat is absolutely correct, that people develop long-term relationships with someone over many decades and they construct who that person is and how they will react. And when that person no longer fits that construct, it can cause a lot of friction and a lot of trying to push people back into the construct with which they are comfortable and familiar, even though that individual no longer fits and is not capable of inhabiting it.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkSo we’re essentially meeting the patient where they are. How do we do that? I mean, how do we reframe it for ourselves?But what kind of strategies should we undertake? There are probably numerous Americans out there, numerous family members who are dealing with this. What’s the first step?Andrew Duxbury, MD, University of Alabama BirminghamWell, the first step is to understand that life has always changed and that the biggest problems happen when we try to remain static, that we try to hold people in one place or we try to hold life in one pattern or we try to force people into a life pattern that they constructed for themselves in the past that they no longer fit. We’re really good at understanding these changes in younger people. A five-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 15-year-old and a 20-year-old are all very different beings, even though they’re only five years apart from each other.But we’re really terrible about understanding that these same kinds of changes and these same different or these very large differences can happen in the same kind of speed later in life. And so you have to always understand, you have to look forward, you have to understand that you have to move toward whatever way things are changing and not try to hold back in what is no longer appropriate.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkAnd so, you know, in terms of tactics, I’ve been reading a lot up, reading up a lot on dementia, reading a lot on music to stimulate some of those memories. Does that help kind of get the ball rolling? If a loved one loved a certain theater production to go into one of your hobbies or they liked a certain sound of music, would that help kind of stimulate?Andrew Duxbury, MD, University of Alabama BirminghamIt absolutely can. We lay down our understanding of culture, particularly kind of pop culture, in a very specific band of our lives between roughly the ages of 12 and 25. Everything that we come to understand as being right about music, television, movies, is all created for us when we’re going through that particular maturation process.I read somewhere that the key year in regards to music is the year we are 14. Whatever we are listening to that year is what we define as being good music for the rest of our lives. So for people with dementia, because music is processed in a very different way in the brain than language.And this is why, for instance, like all of the great epics are written in poetry, because we can not transfer orally prose language in large chunks, person to person very well. But we can transfer lyric and song and poetry person to person in large chunks much more easily. We lay down those poems and those songs and that and we always remember them and we all know this phenomenon because we’ve all been in the car listening to the radio and some song comes on that we haven’t heard in decades and we’re singing along.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkDoctor, in terms of the environment, thank you for that, in terms of the environment that we’re in when we’re communicating with our loved ones, should it be less stimulative, meaning quieter environment where you can look at the person one-on-one, there’s not these distractions, for example, you’re not in the mall, you’re not in…Andrew Duxbury, MD, University of Alabama BirminghamAbsolutely. Our brains have a finite capacity for processing information. And in a young healthy brain, that capacity is pretty large and a young person can be in a party and yelling and shrieking and music is blaring and you can hear someone say your name across the room and you can all of a sudden focus in on that conversation and drop out all of the other noise.But older brains just can’t do that. Older brains also have to deal with the fact that hearing decreases some as we age, it happens in everybody, and because we don’t hear as well, we start making up with that with other cues and we all start reading lips as we age in terms of understanding spoken language. So in order to really clearly understand someone, we have to see the face and we have to have not too much extraneous noise that the brain could pull into sound processing as somehow being part of the spoken information.At my age, in my mid-60s now, I realized that if the lawnmower or something’s going outside the window, all of a sudden the person talking to me from the other room is like they’re speaking Swahili because other noises are just getting into that stream of information and I don’t understand it as well.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkWell, doctor, I’ve got about a minute left and I want to ask you, I want you to touch on the latest, the future of research, but also could you talk about integrating technology? There’s a lot of new technology out there. People that go to the Consumer Electronics Show know there’s a lot of technology that’s being demoed for people in our age demographic.Andrew Duxbury, MD, University of Alabama BirminghamWell, it’s because there’s so many people in our age demographic. We have roughly somewhere between 8 and 10,000 people a day having their 80th birthday for the next 20 years and that’s just the baby boom and what has happened with our society. I don’t know exactly how AI is going to build into all of this and how we age and how we process information.My guess is there will be devices that will come online that will allow us to better understand the streams of information we need to and that AI will be able to help us eliminate those which are distracting. How that’s going to work, I have no idea. That’s way over my head in terms of understanding technology.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkYeah, well certainly, it’s iterative. We’re sure there are people in the field that you’re in or trying to take the data sets, trying to analyze them and try to get that research done more expeditiously. Dr. Duxbury, we’re going to have to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us and look, we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon, sir.Andrew Duxbury, MD, University of Alabama BirminghamIt will be my pleasure.

Restaurant stocks have been a rough ride lately. Since tensions in the Middle East flared, the sector has quietly been losing ground, and Wall Street is starting to pay close attention.The reason is simple. When gas prices rise, people have less money left over for eating out. It’s one of the most direct and predictable patterns in consumer behavior.That’s the warning Deutsche Bank analyst Lauren Silberman issued recently, according to CNBC. The analyst also pointed out that when gas prices spiked in response to the Russia-Ukraine war, several restaurant chains saw a “near-immediate” drop in customer traffic. She thinks it could happen again.Darden Restaurants is one of the most notable casualties. The Orlando, Fla.-based company behind Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, and more than a dozen other dining brands across the U.S. and Canada has seen its share price decline by 7.5% over the past month.However, the ongoing drawdown has raised the forward yield for Darden (DRI) to 3%, making the dividend stock attractive to income seekers. Darden Restaurants stock is a top buy for income investorsDarden is one of the few casual-dining names to which income investors pay attention. The stock pays shareholders a quarterly dividend of $1.50 per share, up from $0.40 per share in 2006.In the past two decades, DRI stock has returned 452% to shareholders. However, if adjusted for dividend reinvestments, the cumulative returns exceed 900%, according to Y-charts.com. Analysts tracking the dividend stock forecast that the restaurant giant will end fiscal 2026 with free cash flow of less than $1 billion. Comparatively, the annual dividend expense for Darden is around $700 million, indicating a high payout ratio of 70%. However, given consensus estimates, FCF is forecast to improve to $1.6 billion in fiscal 2029 (ending in May). Over the next three years, the annual dividend will be around $7.16 per share. Key dividend metrics for Darden stock:Dividend yield: Approx. 3%Quarterly dividend per share: $1.50Annual dividend per share: $6Dividend payout ratio: Roughly 70% of FCFDividend frequency: QuarterlyDarden has steadily increased its dividend each year following its post-pandemic recovery. For income investors, a payout ratio around 70% means the company earns more than it pays out, leaving room to sustain the dividend even if profits dip slightly.Macro headwinds could impact DardenDespite the stock’s recent slide, Darden delivered a solid second quarter for fiscal year 2026. Total sales came in at $3.1 billion, up 7% from the same period last year.Same-restaurant sales grew 4.3% across the portfolio. That beat the broader casual dining industry benchmark by 300 basis points year over year (YoY). 

Olive Garden is the key driver of sales for Darden Restaurants.Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Olive Garden was a standout. It posted same-restaurant sales growth of 4.7%, helped by its popular Never Ending Pasta Bowl promotion and the launch of first-party delivery through Uber Direct. Delivery made up 4% of total Olive Garden sales during the quarter, and roughly half of that was brand-new, incremental revenue.LongHorn Steakhouse wasn’t far behind, posting same-restaurant sales growth of 5.9%.The bad news? Beef prices. They’ve been running near historically high levels, pushing commodity inflation to around 5.5% for the quarter. Related: Olive Garden makes big menu move as restaurant prices surgeThat squeezed margins across almost every segment. Darden chose to price its menu 1.3% below inflation, meaning it absorbed some of the cost rather than passing it all on to guests. That’s a deliberate strategy to protect long-term loyalty, but it did weigh on near-term earnings.Adjusted diluted earnings per share came in at $2.08, up just 2.5% from a year ago.What’s ahead for Darden stock Management updated its guidance for the full fiscal year. It now expects total sales growth of 8.5% to 9.3%, with same-restaurant sales growth of 3.5% to 4.3%. Full-year adjusted earnings per share guidance remains between $10.50 and $10.70.CFO Raj Vennam said the gap between pricing and inflation should narrow in the second half of the year, helping margins improve. More Dividend Stocks:156-year-old energy giant to pay $17 billion in dividends as oil spikes to $110114-year-old defense stock offers a $3 billion dividend payout in 2026This megacap AI stock pays over $12 billion in annual dividendsBeef costs are expected to ease as the year progresses, providing some relief.Still, with gas prices a wild card and consumers already showing signs of caution, particularly households earning less than $50,000, the near-term outlook for restaurant stocks like Darden carries real risk.Out of the 19 analysts covering Darden stock, 13 recommend “buy” and six recommend “hold.” The average DRI stock price target is $226, 11.6% above the current price. If we include dividends, cumulative returns could be closer to 14.5%.The silver lining for income investors: Darden’s 30-year track record as a public company includes an annualized total shareholder return of 10% or more in every 10 years. That kind of consistency doesn’t disappear overnight.But if gas prices stay elevated heading into summer, Silberman’s warning could prove timely. Investors holding DRI stock for the dividend may want to watch traffic trends closely in the next quarter.Related: Down 63 percent, Warren Buffett dividend stock signals opportunity