the potential combination of a recession and high interest rates could drive investors back to some of the most reliable companies on the market and boost a few dividend etfs wolfe research chief investment strategist chris senyek said in a note to clients on thursday that investors should take a look at socalled dividend aristocrats which tend to perform well when the economic outlook deteriorates our sense is that the market is coming around to our view that the fed is going to be higher for longer and a deeperthanexpected recession is going to hit this year as such we recommend buying dividend aristocrats which are companies that have a long track record of increasing dividends senyek said historically this cohort of stocks has materially outperformed the overall market going into or during recessions additionally dividend aristocrats outperformance has tended to persist during the initial stages of recoveries which also tend to be highly uncertain environments he added the s  p 500 dividend aristocrats index includes the companies in the broader market index that have increased dividends for at least 25 consecutive years the group added three new members earlier this year including jm smucker  one fund that tracks the group directly is the proshares s  p 500 dividend aristocrats etf nobl  the 11 billion fund has underperformed the broader market so far this year with a total return of about 1 but outperformed in 2022 the top holdings in nobl include albemarle  caterpillar and federal realty investment trust  proshares also has smaller funds following a similar formula for dividend growers that are midcap stocks  regl  and tech stocks  tdv  other large funds that focus on stocks with growing dividends but not the aristocrats index directly are the 66 billion vanguard dividend appreciation etf vig and the 8 billion wisdomtree us quality dividend growth fund dgrw  those funds have a total return of 17 and 3 respectively so far this year another similar product is the ishares core dividend etf divb  it is smaller with less than 300 million in assets but has an expense ratio of just 005 the fund is down about 1 year to date and for investors who like to own companies that return cash to shareholders but arent necessarily hunting for income the invesco buyback achievers etf pkw could be a better fit the fund has a total return of 25 this year cnbcs michael bloom contributed to this report