When each individual year is reviewed, it is clear that both the Dogs of the Dow and Small Dogs of the Dow did not outperform each and every year. In fact, the Dogs of the Dow and Small Dogs of the Dow struggled to keep up with the Dow during latter stages of the dot-com boom (1998 and 1999) as well as during the financial crisis (2007–2009). This suggests that an investor would be best served by viewing this as a longer-term strategy by giving this portfolio of stocks time to recover in case of a rare-but-extreme economic event (e.g., dot-com boom, financial crisis).