Over the years I've come across plenty of "magic" stock-picking formulas. From Jim Slater's Zulu Principle, to Michael O'Higgins's Dogs of the Dow and David Dreman's Contrarian approach, they are a staple of investment book publishing.
To the wishful-thinking investor looking for profits without pain, they can seem like the holy grail. Unfortunately, these methods can gain widespread currency as they lose their edge. Either fashion moves against the approach, leaving you swimming against the investment tide, or the market cottons on and the opportunity disappears.
I've experienced both of these. Ten years ago, I edited a book for Slater in which he tested O'Higgins's high-yield approach on the UK market. It had worked here as well as in the US and Pep Up Your Wealth was the trigger for several high-yield funds.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these launches coincided with a shift in investment fashion to growth stocks in the late 1990s and the method has since had a patchy record. I still believe it is one of the simplest and safest ways for relatively inexperienced investors who want something more exciting than buying a pooled fund but, as with any stock-picking method, you have to be prepared to go through a few lean years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/04/04/ccinv04.xml
To the wishful-thinking investor looking for profits without pain, they can seem like the holy grail. Unfortunately, these methods can gain widespread currency as they lose their edge. Either fashion moves against the approach, leaving you swimming against the investment tide, or the market cottons on and the opportunity disappears.
I've experienced both of these. Ten years ago, I edited a book for Slater in which he tested O'Higgins's high-yield approach on the UK market. It had worked here as well as in the US and Pep Up Your Wealth was the trigger for several high-yield funds.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these launches coincided with a shift in investment fashion to growth stocks in the late 1990s and the method has since had a patchy record. I still believe it is one of the simplest and safest ways for relatively inexperienced investors who want something more exciting than buying a pooled fund but, as with any stock-picking method, you have to be prepared to go through a few lean years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/04/04/ccinv04.xml
