Domino’s Pizza Is Down 28% This Year. Is It Time to Sell or Load Up?

Domino’s Pizza (NASDAQ:DPZ | DPZ Price Prediction) stock has slid sharply in 2026, falling several times as far as either the consumer discretionary sector or the broad market has moved. The Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEARCA:XLY) is down 7% year to date (YTD). The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is up 13% YTD, a split that puts Domino’s Pizza shares well below both benchmarks.

Domino’s Pizza stock trades at $294.74, down 28% YTD. Meanwhile, McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) stock is at $237.53, down 21% YTD, a substantial slide at the largest name in the quick-service industry. Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) stock is at $94.11, up 14% YTD, moving in the opposite direction from the two food chains.

How Domino’s Pizza Stock Compares With Its Peers

The scale of the Domino’s Pizza drop tells the first part of the story. Shares have fallen several times as far as the Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR Fund this year, so the sector and the wider economy account for only part of what happened to the shares. In Wednesday trading, the stock is down 0.8%, a small move that fits inside the wider year-long slide rather than shaping it.

McDonald’s has fallen a long way over the same stretch, which says the pressure reached the largest operator in the quick-service industry rather than stopping at one franchise system. Yet, Starbucks moved in the opposite direction, rising as Domino’s Pizza and McDonald’s both slid. That split rules out reading 2026 as a verdict on restaurants as a group, and it pushes the question onto what separates these businesses from one another.

The gap between the Domino’s Pizza decline and the McDonald’s decline is real, and it means there’s company-specific weight in the Domino’s Pizza chart even after adjusting for a shared industry backdrop. Read that way, the year’s damage at Domino’s Pizza looks like a mix rather than a single cause. Some slice of it belongs to the category, and a bigger slice belongs to Domino’s Pizza on its own.

Why Starbucks Stock Breaks the Pattern

Starbucks is the complication that makes the Domino’s Pizza question harder rather than easier. Its gain over 2026 sits alongside the Domino’s Pizza decline and the McDonald’s decline, so something distinguished the winners from the losers inside the same category rather than lifting or sinking all of them together. For a Domino’s Pizza holder, that gap is the piece that has to be understood before selling looks like the obvious answer.

The sector fund is lower on the year, but by a much smaller margin than Domino’s Pizza fell, and the broad market fund is higher. That combination narrows how much of the Domino’s Pizza slide can be attributed to the sector, and even less of it points to the macro backdrop. What’s left is a company-specific gap that the price data frames without resolving.

Starbucks rising as Domino’s Pizza fell undermines the shared consumer story that often gets used as the default explanation for restaurants in a soft year. It also shows a coffee-led operator and a pizza-led operator diverging inside the same broad category, a reminder that peer comparisons only carry a Domino’s Pizza holder so far when businesses inside a group respond differently to the same conditions.

What to Watch

A fair answer to the title question holds both sides in view. Domino’s Pizza has fallen further than any peer or benchmark carried here, which is the bear reading, and the drop has outpaced the decline in the broader consumer discretionary group. That gap can be read as evidence of something wrong at Domino’s Pizza that other operators have avoided this year.

However, Domino’s Pizza stock has slid alongside McDonald’s stock, so the pressure has reached more than a single name, and the scale of the drop could set up a rebound if the category firms and the operational picture at Domino’s Pizza improves. The next Domino’s Pizza earnings report is the nearest scheduled event capable of changing the reading, and the widening gap with Starbucks is the reference point to weigh against it.

Investors weighing whether to sell can size their positions in Domino’s Pizza to reflect that unresolved question rather than a verdict the price data hasn’t yet delivered. Trimming their exposure or capping the weighting of Domino’s Pizza inside a diversified book is one way to hold the name while limiting their risk if the underperformance continues into 2027. Keeping some allocation preserves the option that the gap with Starbucks narrows in the next earnings cycle.

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