Category Archives: Dogs of the Dow

DJIA in Review: Week 21

Below is the year-to-date (YTD) performance of various major indexes and from December 31, 2019 to May 22, 2020.

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The following is the breakdown of the Dogs of the Dow (found here) in week 21, compared to other fundamental ratios. Continue reading

DJIA in Review: 2020-19

The following is the breakdown of the Dogs of the Dow (found here) in week nineteen, compared to other fundamental ratios. Continue reading

DJIA in Review: Week 10

Below is the year-to-date (YTD) performance of various major indexes and from December 31, 2019 to March 6, 2020.

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The following is the breakdown of the Dogs of the Dow (found here) in week ten, compared to other fundamental ratios. Continue reading

Dogs of the Dow: Week 9

Below is the year-to-date (YTD) performance of various major indexes from December 31, 2019 to February 28, 2020.

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Although NLO’s Best lost –4.51%, the groups that we would have selected declined –7.57% or –7.32%.  So while –4.51% is less than half the loss of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (our benchmark), our personal favorites would not have done as well.

There is a need to point out the rationale of investing in the major indexes or choosing to buy an S&P 500 Index fund.  The conventional wisdom is that the more broadly diversified the index the lower the volatility and risk.  The trade-off of choosing a broadly diversified index is that you’ll achieve relatively diminished returns on the upside.

Along with diversification, quality is a key component to the change in indexes on the way up and down.  Conventional wisdom suggests that higher quality will be last to fall and lower quality will be first to fall.  Magnitude of change also is assumed to change along the spectrum of quality.  Higher quality generally does well in the early stages of a rise and decline.  Lower quality generally overperforms in the late stages of a rise and severely underperforms in early stages of a decline.

Although broadly diversified, indexes like the Russell 2000 or S&P 600 hold lower quality stocks which results in a more rapid decline in price.  Alternatively, narrowly diversified indexes like the Nasdaq 100 and Dow Jones Utility Average thrive as their quality of holdings leave investors less willing to sell in a general market decline.

We take a certain level of pride in the fact that, on the whole, our stocks of choices reflect higher quality in spite of the extremely low number of positions that are included.  We believe that our overall analysis puts investors in a better position when making the choice between buying an S&P 500 Index Fund with zero expense ratios while having limited funds to invest with.

The following is the breakdown of the Dogs of the Dow (found here) in week nine, compared to other fundamental ratios and varying portfolio sizes. Continue reading

DJIA in Review: 2020-7

Below is the year-to-date (YTD) performance of various major indexes and from December 31, 2019 to February 14, 2020.

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The following is the breakdown of the Dogs of the Dow (found here) in week seven, compared to other fundamental ratios. Continue reading

DJIA in Review: 2020-6

The following is the breakdown of the Dogs of the Dow (found here) in week six, compared to other fundamental ratios. Continue reading

Income Bellwethers

In March 2019, Morningstar published their Income Bellwether Watchlist with data from February 11, 2019.  Below is the performance of the stocks based on the highest and lowest dividend yield from February 11, 2019 to February 7, 2020 (intraday).

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Based on the data, High Yield stocks severely underperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average, even in the best case scenario.  Meanwhile, the Low Yield stocks trounced the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  This data confirms our work in the Dogs of the Dow.

DJIA in Review: 2020-5

The following is the breakdown of the Dogs of the Dow (found here) in week five, compared to other fundamental ratios. Continue reading

DJIA in Review: 2020-4

The following is the breakdown of the Dogs of the Dow (found here) in week four, compared to other fundamental ratios. Continue reading

DJIA in Review: 2020-3

The following is the breakdown of the Dogs of the Dow (found here) in week three, compared to other fundamental ratios. Continue reading

Penultimate Profit Prospect

According to the book Beating the Dow by Michael O’Higgins, the Penultimate Profit Prospect:

“…is not, strictly speaking, a portfolio, but rather a single stock, the second lowest priced high-yielder [among the ten lowest yielding stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average] (O’Higgins, Michael. Beating the Dow. 2000. page 199.).”

The first step in determining the second lowest priced stock of the  high-yielders is to rank all of the Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks by their dividend yield. 

After ranking these stocks, you then re-rank the ten highest yielding stocks by price from lowest to highest.  The second lowest priced stock was Pfizer (PFE) based on the year end 2018 price and dividend yield.

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When ranked by yield, from highest to lowest, and then selecting the second lowest priced stock from among the top ten highest yielding stocks we arrive at a change in price that is pegged at –10.24% for Pfizer (PFE).

Again, our spectrum analysis attempts to find the opposite scenario to determine if it would result in an outcome that confirms the assessment or arrives at a different conclusion.  To keep the process as simple as possible, we’ve elected to choose the second lowest yielding stock (Nike), regardless of price, to see if it would perform any better than O’Higgins Penultimate Profit Prospect stock.

When we contrast the performance of the Penultimate Profit Prospect with the second lowest yielding stock, we find that the returns are –10.24% versus +36.65%, respectively.  This seems unusual to us but consistent with the data that we’ve run on the Dogs of the Dow in the period from 1996-2019. The low yielding stocks routine outperform the high yielding stocks. 

So, in order to stretch the concept even further, we’ve ranked the 30 stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from highest yielding to lowest yielding in the period from 1997 to 2019.  Then, we compared the individual ranks for each year to determine the average rate of change for that specific ranking.  Below is the graphing of the individual performance with the stock ranked number 1 being the highest yielding while the stock ranked 30 being the lowest yielding  from 1997-2019.

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Based on the ranking of the data, the true penultimate profit prospect would seem to be the stock with second lowest dividend yield.  In this case, the 2nd lowest yielding stocks gained +13.68% in the period from 1997 to 2019.

DJIA in Review: 2020-2

The following is the breakdown of the Dogs of the Dow (found here) in week two, compared to other fundamental ratios. Continue reading

DJIA in Review: 2020-1

The following is the breakdown of the Dogs of the Dow (found here) in week one, compared to other fundamental ratios. Continue reading

2020 Dogs of the Dow

Below is the Dogs of the Dow for 2020 with the breakdown of the other categories that we track.

Continue reading

2019 Dogs of the Dow

Below is a chart of the performance of the Dogs of the Dow from December 31, 2018 to December 31, 2019.

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In 2019, the Dogs of the Dow (high yield) failed to exceed the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  In addition, the Dogs of the Dow (high yield) severely underperformed the low yield stocks by a margin of +15%.

Our commentary from the January 2019 Dogs of the Dow watch list had the following to say:

“Our preference is for stocks in the highest p/e or lowest yield stocks.”

While the top 3 stocks in the high p/e category underperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average with a gain of +13.54%, the low yield group crushed the index with gains of +36.71% and +32.36%.

1996-2019 Long-Term Performance

Below is our long-term performance of the Dogs of the Dow from 1996 to 2019 for both the top ten and top 3 stocks for the respective categories.

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As is the case, the Dogs of the Dow (high yield) underperform the DJIA and the low yield category.  High P/E stocks seem to win the day with above average gains on a long term basis.  This is counter to the belief that investors should buy low p/e stocks.

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