Quickly, a superficial look-see:

DOW could well be a good buy candidate. On the face of things it looks quite cheap, with a large well covered dividend.

However, during the last market plunge and recession DOW's earnings plunged much more than its stock price. In 2000 they earned $2.22 a share, the next year: 52 cents. It took until 2004 to beat 2000's earnings. So, this seems to be a cyclical business that isn't insulated from the economies highs and lows. Their history of earnings growth goes from high to low with long plateaus of stagnation in between.

The other issue is they have agreed to acquire Hohm and Haas for $78 a share in cash. Including assuming Hohm and Haas' debt this is going to cost them a cool $18.8 billion. They're going to have to take on more debt to cover this. They currently owe about $7 billion and have $1.7 million in cash.

This might be another case of bad timing: taking on a big acquisition, which at another time would be a smart move, but in this credit market and economic climate could prove to be more problematic than productive —for quite a while. I don't know.

And, is the dividend safe given the need for more cash; even though the current pay out ratio is reasonable? If DOW repeats it's earnings swoon of 2001, given the Hohm and Haas acquisition, I would expect the dividend to be cut.