Quick Read – Verizon’s ~6% yield and 19% year-to-date gain make it the highest-yielding pick, while Home Depot has paid 156 consecutive quarterly dividends. – Duke Energy beat Q1 EPS estimates for the fourth straight quarter and backs a $103 billion capital plan targeting steady…
rnings growth through 2030. – Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Home Depot didn’t make the cut. Grab the names FREE today
Mid-June is when income-focused investors typically run a quiet portfolio audit: are the dividend checks still landing, is the yield still competitive and does each name hold up if the market wobbles into year-end? Three large-cap NYSE names — Verizon (NYSE:VZ), Home Depot (NYSE:HD) and Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) — keep showing up on that short list, and the recent data tells you why. Each one pairs a multi-decade payout track record with a defensive business model, which is exactly the profile retirees lean on when cash flow matters more than capital gains.
Motley Fool’s May 2026 coverage flagged all three as top retiree income picks, citing roughly a 6% yield on Verizon and double-digit-percent payout growth at Home Depot and Duke Energy over the past decade. The verified data backs up the framing. Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Verizon is the highest-yielding name in this group and the one with the clearest turnaround story attached.