Don't let anyone tell you dividend stocks are incapable of healthy growth. Growth stocks such as Nvidia and Broadcom may have dominated headlines in recent years due to their huge artificial intelligence (AI)-driven gains. It's not like dividend stocks completely faltered during that stretch, though. Many performed pretty well during that period, too, as evidenced by the performance of the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG -0.28%) over the course of the past five years. Then and now The graphic below ...