Worried About the Market? These Stocks Have a Track Record of Helping Investors Sleep at Night.

When the market is soaring, safety can get thrown by the wayside. Everyone is making money and looks smart, so why do all the boring work of actually researching whether your portfolio is built to survive through the market cycle?

It is these time periods -- when the S&P 500 is rocketing to all-time highs -- that can be most impactful to prepare your portfolio for future bear markets. You do not want to sacrifice all your gains over the last few years and risk your portfolio dropping sharply.

To counteract these risks, it can pay (literally) to own dividend growth stocks with long histories of low volatility. Here are three healthcare giants that have fantastic track records of helping investors sleep well at night.

Steady dividend payments

One of the longest-running dividend growers is Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ). You may know the company from its consumer brands, but these have actually been sold off, and the remaining business focuses on pharmaceutical products and medical device sales, with a wide diversity of products.

The healthcare giant, with a market capitalization of $612 billion, grew sales 6.6% year over year last quarter to $25 billion. This steady growth enables J&J to grow its dividend per share every year. Its payout has increased 67% over the last 10 years, with 64 consecutive years of increases. This makes it a Dividend King, or a company that's grown its dividend payment for at least 50 consecutive years.

What's more, the stock is not one to experience any massive volatility. In the last 10 years, it has experienced only one 25% drawdown, and that was a brief moment during the March 2020 market panic.

Image source: Getty Images.

A health insurance giant

UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) may not seem like a sleep-well-at-night candidate, but its long-term history has been much steadier. In recent years, the largest health insurer in the United States has seen its stock price collapse by more than 50% due to increased claims costs in 2024 and 2025, which have proven temporary, as well as overspending/fraud among the various sectors UnitedHealth Group serves.

Before that, UnitedHealth stock had never experienced a drawdown of more than 25% following the great financial crisis in 2008, riding the steady tailwind of healthcare cost inflation to higher premium revenues. This, in turn, has made UnitedHealth a nice dividend stock, with its dividend per share up 271% in the last 10 years.

Now, you can buy this dividend growth stock at a much higher yield than historically, with a current yield of 2.26%. With healthcare spending set to continue rising over the next decade, investors will do well owning UnitedHealth stock in their portfolios as a dividend grower.

JNJ Dividend data by YCharts

A supply chain giant

A hidden winner in the healthcare supply chain has been McKesson (NYSE: MCK). It is the largest pharmaceutical distributor in the U.S., with a market cap of just under $100 billion. The leader in its sector has ridden the rising tide of healthcare spending in the country, much like the other two stocks.

It had one 50% drawdown from 2015 to 2018, but aside from that, the last 15 years have been close to smooth sailing for this business. Dividend payments have steadily grown, with the dividend per share up 193% in the last 10 years.

Healthcare as a defensive investment

Overall, healthcare is one of the best sectors to invest in if you are worried about bear markets or a cyclical bust. No matter how well the economy is doing, people will spend money on healthcare services, as they are almost always non-discretionary. This is why McKesson, UnitedHealth Group, and Johnson & Johnson have been great dividend growth stocks and should continue to deliver solid gains for investors in the years ahead.

Brett Schafer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Johnson & Johnson, McKesson, and UnitedHealth Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.