3 Dow Jones stocks you’ve never thought of buying for 2025

The Dow 30 contains many leading US stocks including Apple (AAPL) Amazon (AMZN) Nvidia (NVDA) and Microsoft (MSFT) but these are stocks that have had plenty of media attention and headlines in 2024 so I wanted to find stocks that offered upside potential but which were nt mega cap techs.

To do that I screened the dow constituents for stocks which had delivered positive share price movement over the last 6 months and then fittered that list for those that had also posted gains over 1 and 3-month periods.

Interestingly using those criteria naturally screened out most of the mega cap names. Though as it was a performance based screen, Nvidia did manage to slip in but only just, as its 3-month performance was a mere +0.57%.

The Dow Jones 30 index is something of a historical anomaly; it was one of the earliest if not the first equity index and rose to prominence because it was just about possible to calculate the index change manually every hour in the age before computers. Thirty stocks was a manageable number; brokers had 2-minutes to calculate the price change in each stock, and its impact on the overall index, before that change was due to be published.

Unlike most of its peers the Dow 30 is price weighted, which means that higher priced stocks exert a bigger influence on the index level lower price stocks have a smaller influence

Today there are thousands of indices which are updated in real time yet the Dow still serves as a barometer for US equity sentiment despite its foibles and narrow coverage. Here are three of my top picks for 2025.

3M (MMM)

These days 3M is a diversified technology company operating in markets such as, safety, healthcare equipment, electronics and transportation, food preparation, purification systems, stationary and home improvement products. Conglomerates have been out of fashion for some time in the US and 3M’s rival GE recently broke itself up.

3M has a market cap of $76.80 billion and sales of $32.0 billion; it trades on Forward PE of 17.90 times and is very much on the recovery trail. Its share price has rallied by +34.78% over the last 6 months and by +59.54% over the last year.

Price momentum that has created a 12-month outperformance of the broader market, of +33.0%, and created 29 consecutive new highs.

The stock is not without it problems and as such its rated as moderate buy among the 16 analysts that cover it who have a $150.00 price target on the name

3M will report earnings on January 21st, and at first glance they seem to have pleased the market with an earnings beat of 13 cents and guidance for 2025 earnings, that’s above the top end of the street’s range.

The stock has traded almost +5.00% higher from the open as a result.

Goldman Sachs (GS)

The premier US investment bank recently reported another set of quality earnings- which sent the stock price up by almost +12.00%, in the week since the results were released.

Goldman’s reported net revenues of $53.10 billion and net earnings per share of $14.28 for the full year 2024.

EPS in 2024 almost doubled compared to 2023’s numbers, and Q4 earnings of $11.95 for Q4 2024, more than doubled Q4 2023’s $5.48.

Goldmans was ranked as the No.1 adviser on completed M&A activity in 2024, on a global basis. And expectations are for another bumper year for ist corporate finance department , particularly under a free market friendly President and administration.

Goldman’s remains a moderate buy among the 22 Wall Street analysts that cover them, who have a price target of $640.00.

However, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see upgrades from the bank’s competitors,as they begrudgingly acknowledge just what a money-making machine the Investment bank is.

Indeed banks such as UBS, Barclays, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America have recently raised their prices targets on GS.

American Express (AXP)

My third pick is a diversified financial services company that’s most well known for its credit and charge card products.

American Express has been in the Dow 30 since 1982, and if we look at its price performance we find that it’s up by +485.70% over 20 years, and that it has made solid gains over 10, 5, 3 and 1-year time frames.

Indeed it’s posted 56 new highs over the last 52 weeks, over which time it has outperformed the wider market by an impressive +45.44%. Year to date the stock price is up by +6.40%

American Express has a market cap of $222.0 billion and a forward PE of just over 20.50 times earnings; it has grown its dividend by +61.00% over the last 5-years, whilst its revenue and earnings have each grown by more than +50.00% in that time frame.

Wall Street thinks that the stock price has an over run, rating it as a moderate buy with a price target of $306.27, and thus below the stock’s current level.

I don’t want to say that those 29 analysts are wrong, however from a chart perspective it looks to have broken out in 2025, gapping up from recent highs.

Earnings on January 24th will tell us more, but any dip could present an entry opportunity, particularly as the stock has spent very little time below its 50 day moving average in the last 2-years ,and when it has dipped underneath its bounced back in short order.