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In January 2025, the S&P MidCap 400^® Dividend Aristocrats^® celebrated its 10-year anniversary. Reflecting on this milestone, S&P DJI has taken this as an opportunity to compare the performance of this flagship index through two distinct perspectives. The first involves analyzing its performance against a selection of actively managed U.S. value funds from the past 10 years, while the second focuses on comparing it to S&P MidCap 400 broad benchmarks and associated style indices. This blog aims to highlight the strong performance of the S&P MidCap 400 Dividend Aristocrats through both of these analytical lenses over the past decade.

Like other S&P Dividend Aristocrats Indices, the S&P MidCap 400 Dividend Aristocrats follows a simple but stringent metric to select constituents.¹ To be eligible for inclusion, companies must be a member of the S&P MidCap 400 and have raised dividends for a minimum of 15 consecutive years. As a result, the strategy tends to identify companies with financial stability, consistent profitability and disciplined capital allocation. After the latest rebalance on Jan. 31, 2025, the index was tracking 54 companies.

Performance Comparison

As Exhibit 1 shows, over the past decade, the S&P MidCap 400 Dividend Aristocrats outperformed 91.64% of active funds marketed as “value” products that provide U.S. large-, mid-, small- and micro-cap exposure, highlighting its long-term effectiveness versus active strategies in this category. This substantial outperformance ratio speaks to the strategy’s success relative to active managers while adhering to a straightforward yet rigorous methodology. What adds to the significance of this achievement is that the universe does not adjust for sales charges (such as front-end loads, deferred loads and redemption fees) that may be common within active strategies.

 

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Exhibit 2 illustrates the outperformance of the S&P 400 Dividend Aristocrats compared to the S&P 400^® and the S&P MidCap 400 Equal Weight Index, along with the S&P 400 MidCap Value and S&P 400 MidCap Growth, highlighting its strong performance across the entire style box. Notably, the strategy not only exceeded the performance of all indices in absolute terms but also achieved the lowest volatility, resulting in a risk-adjusted return of 0.65 during the period.

 

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Conclusion

The S&P MidCap 400 Dividend Aristocrats’ straightforward yet stringent methodology has been shown to align with sound economic rationale, and the index has consistently outperformed most of the active funds studied here as well as its broad benchmarks and style indices over the decade since its launch. This impressive track record of outperformance shows the resilience of the S&P Dividend Aristocrats Series, while further enhancing its reputation.

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