BUSINESS

Chevron Corporation (CVX) is one of the biggest dividend stocks in the S&P 500, consistently returning billions of dollars to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks.Right now, economic uncertainty in the form of tariffs and geopolitical tensions can create opportunities for dividend investors, since dividend stocks often provide reliable cash flow amidst volatility.Here’s what investors should know about Chevron’s dividend:Does Chevron pay dividends?Yes, Chevron has paid a regular dividend to shareholders for decades. Its dividend yield in 2026 is between 3% and 4%, which is significantly higher than the average yield of most S&P 500 companies, which is just 1–2%.On March 10, 2026, Chevron increased its annual dividend to approximately $7.12 per share, or about $1.78 per share per quarter.Chevron has a long history of increasing its dividend even in turbulent markets, growing it from $4.28 annually in 2021 to $7.12 today, or roughly 5% per year.Related: Is Chevron a good long-term investment? Its buy-and-hold prospects explainedLast year, Chevron reported net income of $12.3 billion and adjusted free cash flow of $20.2 billion.In addition, its July 2025 acquisition of Hess Corp. expanded the company’s output to a record 4.1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.“The completion of the Hess acquisition further strengthens our diversified portfolio and positions us to extend our production and free cash flow growth profile well into the next decade,” CEO Mike Wirth said on the company’s Q4 earnings call.Investors often view expanding cash flow and dividend increases as signs of stability and growth, which makes CVX an appealing stock for income investors.How often does Chevron pay dividends?Chevron pays dividends quarterly. This means that shareholders receive payments every three months, or four times a year.Related: What does Chevron mean? A look inside its corporate logoChevron’s current annual payout is approximately $7.12 per share, so investors receive roughly $1.78 per share each quarter.Investors can reinvest their dividends (to buy additional shares) or take them as cash.When does Chevron pay dividends?Historically, Chevron has paid its dividends in March, June, September, and December.To receive the upcoming payout, investors must own the stock before the ex-dividend date, which is one business day before the record date.Chevron typically gives investors several weeks’ notice; for example, on January 30, 2026, it declared a $ 1.78-per-share dividend payable on March 10, 2026. Its ex-dividend date was February 17, 2026, meaning that anyone who purchased shares by February 16 was entitled to the dividend.Is Chevron a dividend aristocrat?Yes, CVX is a dividend aristocrat. To qualify for this elite group, a company must increase its dividend for at least 25 consecutive years. Chevron has actually increased its dividend for 39 years straight.Currently, only 69 dividend aristocrats trade on the stock exchanges.Company histories:History of Microsoft: Company timeline & factsHistory of Coca-Cola: Timeline, facts & milestonesHistory of Nike: Company timeline and factsBeing designated a dividend aristocrat is especially impressive for a company like Chevron, because it operates in the notoriously volatile commodities industry. CVX has consistently raised its dividend, even through major market downturns such as the Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 stock market crash.In addition to being a dividend aristocrat, Chevron is also a Dog of the Dow in 2026—that means it’s one of the 10 biggest dividend yielders in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.Related: The Dow’s best dividend stocks: A shortlist for income investorsIs Chevron’s dividend safe?Investors should always exercise caution when investing in energy companies, as their prices are driven by the ups and downs of the global oil market.That being said, Chevron is considered a secure, long-term investment that offers a solid dividend. Its strong balance sheet and integrated business structure (conducting both upstream and downstream operations) enable it to sustain cash flow and consistently offer payouts — even when oil prices are low.Related: Dow Jones’ revolving door: What happens to a stock after it’s dropped from the DJIA?

Going into Nvidia’s (NVDA) hotly anticipated GTC event, the bar was high. And coming out of it, some of Wall Street’s biggest bulls feel the AI bellwether just raised it even further. Wedbush’s veteran tech analyst Dan Ives, one of Nvidia’s most outspoken bulls, hailed the keynote as a major “confidence boost” for investors, saying it remains “alone at the top of the AI mountain.”At the heart of his bull case is that Nvidia isn’t just riding the tremendous AI wave, but is now expanding its control over the very infrastructure that powers it. The stock market’s reaction to Nvidia’s day-one showing at GTC was mostly positive, but measured.Nvidia stock was up 1.6% on Monday, March 16, per Reuters, and was still in the green Tuesday morning, closing at $183.22. The big headline grabber for Nvidia was CEO Jensen Huang’s updated revenue outlook.He now sees an incremental revenue opportunity of over $1 trillion from its robust Blackwell and Vera Rubin platforms through 2027. That figure indicates AI demand is shifting from a training-driven cycle to a much larger, more sustainable model of inference and real-world deployment.That’s why Ives pointed to Vera Rubin and the GB200 NVL72 as two critical signals in Nvidia’s push into full-stack AI systems tailor-made for agentic AI and rack-scale workloads.

Analyst Dan Ives praises Nvidia’s GTC keynote, pointing to expanding AI moat and long-term growth trajectory.Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Nvidia stock returns vs the S&P 500Over 1W, Nvidia returned 0.31% versus the S&P 500’s -1.42%.Over 1M, Nvidia returned 0.22% versus the S&P 500’s -2.00%.Over 6M, Nvidia returned 4.77% versus the S&P 500’s 1.40%.Year to date, Nvidia returned -1.76% versus the S&P 500’s -2.13%.Over 1Y, Nvidia returned 50.59% versus the S&P 500’s 18.81%.Over 3Y, Nvidia returned 617.36% versus the S&P 500’s 69.16%.Over 5Y, Nvidia returned 1,278.50% versus the S&P 500’s 69.06%.Over 10Y, Nvidia returned 22,041.39% versus the S&P 500’s 230.47%.
Source: Seeking Alpha
Nvidia’s GTC 2026 reveals a bold shift toward AI infrastructure dominanceAs of March 17, 2026, Nvidia’s GTC 2026 event is still underway, but Huang’s keynote and the first day of announcements have already made its message of broad AI dominance clear.It’s trying to convince Mr. Market that it isn’t just an AI-GPU giant, but instead looks to dominate the entire AI factory, from compute and networking to storage, inference software, agents, robotics, and industrial deployment. Here’s what stood out from Huang’s keynote:Inference takes center stage. Nvidia framed AI inference as the next $1 trillion opportunity, effectively shifting the narrative from training large language models to always-on AI workloads like agents and copilots.Vera Rubin becomes the real headline. Nvidia showed off its Vera Rubin platform, essentially a full AI factory that combines GPUs, CPUs, NVLink, BlueField, and more to lower cost-per-token and drive greater efficiency.Groq signals a hybrid future. Integration of Groq 3 LPU shows Nvidia embracing specialized inference chips.Full-stack expansion accelerates. New Vera CPU, Dynamo 1.0 inference OS, and BlueField-4 STX highlight Nvidia’s relentless push to control compute, storage, and orchestration, further growing its market share.Agents get real infrastructure. Tools such as OpenClaw, OpenShell, and NemoClaw place Nvidia as the backbone for autonomous AI systems.Physical AI scales up. Isaac GR00T, Cosmos models, and partnerships with Siemens and TSMC laid the case for robotics, swiftly moving toward real deployment.Space-1 underscores ambition. Space-1 Vera Rubin underscored Nvidia’s goal of AI infrastructure everywhere, even beyond Earth.
Source: Nvidia GTC 2026 Keynote presentation via YouTube
Dan Ives says Nvidia’s GTC proved the AI gap is still wideningNvidia stock investors are clearly looking for something that proves the AI story still has a ton of fuel, and Ives thinks GTC delivered exactly that.In his view, the event essentially reinforced Nvidia’s incredible dominance in AI chips, widening its lead across the entire infrastructure stack.More Nvidia:Nvidia stock gets major reality check on ‘$100B’ numberNvidia CEO delivers blunt 7-word rebuttal on software stocksBank of America resets Nvidia price target after earningsIves said Nvidia remains the gold standard in AI.“Nvidia’s two to three years ahead of anyone, including Google,” he explained in his CNBC interview. “It’s their world; everyone else [is] paying rent.”That’s why the Vera Rubin platform stands out from everything else. For Nvidia bulls, it’s a sign that the tech giant is going deeper into full-system economics. That logic applies to Nvidia’s emphasis on inference and its Groq-linked strategy, which shows it’s ready to dominate the next phase of AI workloads, likely to be much more fleshed out than training.Ives also feels that duration matters a ton in this context, arguing that Nvidia is still in “year three of an eight to 10 year build out,” with areas including physical AI, autonomous robotics, and software far from being fully reflected in its stock.So Nvidia is evolving into the default platform where businesses build serious AI systems, and the GTC announcements reinforced that narrative and then some.Clearly, the moat is still widening, and the bulls feel that Wall Street might still be underestimating how much of its AI spending cycle is flowing through Nvidia.The cracks in Nvidia’s bull case after GTC 2026Despite Ives’ upbeat comments and Nvidia bulls laying out their case, the bear case remains firmly in place.The first and most obvious concern is the sustainability of AI capex.For perspective, Jefferies’ Blayne Curtis recently said hyperscalers could potentially spend $650 billion on AI this year, Yahoo Finance reported. Related: Palantir just got a headline-grabbing boost from the Iran warDespite those numbers, investors are sweating over Nvidia’s top line slowing beyond 2027 if those clients become more financially disciplined.The recent stock market movement in Nvidia supports that, showing that investors remain skeptical of long-term returns and of supply-chain bottlenecks.Another major point to consider is competition.Inference is clearly a massive opportunity, and it’s attracting a ton of competition from all sides, including Intel, Google, and other big players. Nvidia layering in Groq technology is also an implicit admission that the future inference stack might not be that heterogeneous. On top of that, much of that roadmap value sits in the back half of 2026, 2027, or even 2028, meaning much of the flashy GTC content is long-cycle.Additionally, from a valuation perspective, Nvidia stock looks overbought, for the most part.It’s trading at almost 38-times trailing-12-month earnings (69% above the sector median) and roughly 43-times cash flows (147% above the sector median), per Seeking Alpha. When its earnings and cash flows command such premiums, execution risk leaves virtually no breathing room.Wall Street price targets for Nvidia stockBank of America: $300Truist Securities: $283BNP Paribas: $270Morgan Stanley: $260Goldman Sachs: $250UBS: $245
Sources: Barrons, Investing.com
Related: Cathie Wood buys $2 million of tumbling AI stock

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Crypto markets cooled after Monday’s rally, with bitcoin eyeing support near $72,000–$74,000 even as derivatives positioning remains broadly bullish and altcoins see deeper profit-taking.

Bitcoin’s implied volatility holds steady as panic hedging drives traditional volatility indexes higher.