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| Introduction | |
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| A typical situation | |
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| Information everywhere | |
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| So many options | |
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| Is there a simple strategy that makes sense and works? | |
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| This book's goal | |
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| Impeccable common sense | |
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| Comfort level | |
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| The mind extrapolates | |
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| Important lessons from the field of Behavioral Finance | |
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| The psychology of loss, the psychology of gain | |
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| Sell too quick? | |
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| Self control | |
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| Narcissistic distortions | |
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| Open your inner eyes | |
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| Awareness of the inner life | |
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| Investors, listen up! | |
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| Summing up | |
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| The First Hurdle: Say Goodbye to Bonds and Hello to Bouncing Principal | |
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| The environment for investors | |
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| A bill that never arrives in the mail | |
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| Maintaining purchasing power | |
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| Graphical view of inflation and the declines of the dollar | |
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| A loaf of bread became a slice of bread | |
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| "Safe" investments do not outperform inflation | |
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| Bonds haven't really beaten inflation | |
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| Bonds, bad | |
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| Learning to love fluctuations | |
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| The risk/confidence equation | |
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| Banks in the 1990s | |
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| Easy to hold, easy to buy declines | |
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| Summing up | |
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| The Eighth Wonder: A First Look at Compounding | |
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| Harnessing the power of time and growth | |
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| Compounding is the money that money makes | |
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| Simple vs. compound gains | |
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| Time is all you need | |
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| Some magical examples | |
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| The eighth wonder | |
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| Average annual returns | |
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| Time, patience, and the right kind of stock | |
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| A company's reliable growth shared with owners | |
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| Summing up | |
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| The Single Best Investment: Creating Your Own Private Compounding Machine | |
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| The "parts" of a compounding machine | |
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| The operator | |
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| Dividend growth is the hidden key | |
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| Dividend growth drives the compounding principle | |
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| Dividends are the truth | |
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| Management's signaling device | |
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| High returns from dividends alone | |
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| Dividend growth boosts a stock's price | |
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| Reinvestment is behind the bulk of long-term wealth creation | |
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| An investor's growth connects to a company's growth through rising dividends | |
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| Summing up | |
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| The Single Best Investment Strategy Applied | |
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| An almost impossibly simple formula | |
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| High financial strength | |
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| Low debt | |
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| High interest coverage | |
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| Moderate reliable earnings growth | |
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| Credit experts do the rating work for us | |
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| Dividend history | |
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| Quality is a management issue | |
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| Tough times, acquisitions | |
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| Franchise or niche | |
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| Real products for real people | |
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| High current yield | |
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| A better base level quickens the end point for most mortals | |
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| Some simple ways to project future dividend growth | |
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| Emphasizing reliability of mature companies | |
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| Cyclicals are problematic | |
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| Obvious cases are good enough | |
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| Summing up | |
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| Traditional Valuation Tools | |
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| The quest for cheapness is filled with tricks and traps | |
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| Good relative valuations can give you an edge | |
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| Price/sales ratio | |
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| Revenues are the raw material of profit | |
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| Price/earnings ratio, a slippery concept | |
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| Remember to adjust ratios to the relevant industry group | |
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| Book value | |
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| Cash flow and cash growth | |
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| A takeover? | |
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| Insiders activity | |
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| Summing up | |
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| Does Undervaluation Exist? The Story of the Stock | |
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| How can so many stocks be "undervalued?" | |
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| Undervaluation and arrogance | |
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| A story proposal | |
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| The story of the stock | |
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| A stable, proven marketplace | |
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| A growth kicker | |
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| Solid base of reliable cash flow | |
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| Consolidation | |
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| Stock buy-backs | |
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| A tailwind | |
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| Can there be bargains? | |
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| Moderate reliable growth as a story | |
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| Summing up | |
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| Charts Can Help You | |
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| Academics call them laughable | |
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| The alpha mystery | |
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| Relative strength studies | |
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| Technical analysis helps reveal the subjective attitude of investors | |
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| The Miller/Howard quantitative technical study | |
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| The key item is relative strength | |
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| Six months of relative weakness | |
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| When all is in concert | |
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| Beware the parabolic | |
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| The selling climax | |
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| Look for the turn | |
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| Technicals for selling | |
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| Summing up | |
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| A Gallery of Single Best Investment Stocks | |
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| An array of various kinds of qualifying stocks, with text pages from Value Line and explanations indicating how to identify and analyze them | |
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| For illustration only, not current recommendations | |
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| Caveat emptor | |
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| How to Hold and When to Sell: Attitude is Everything | |
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| Investing is about character | |
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| Too many stimuli | |
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| The system is an antidote | |
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| Easy in, easy out; liquidity is a devil | |
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| Avoid tracking your stocks too closely | |
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| Let management be your employees | |
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| The real estate paradigm, a landlord's attitude | |
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| Dividends: always the key | |
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| Is it in jeopardy? Has it gone up in the past year? | |
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| Other reasons to sell | |
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| Summing up | |
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| Building Your Portfolio | |
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| Asset allocation, today's buzzword | |
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| Should you bet on every horse? | |
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| Classic asset allocations and their portfolio characteristics | |
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| Accomplishing the same thing in a single SBI account | |
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| "Balanced accounts" and bond/stock volatility | |
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| Industry breakdown of an SBI portfolio | |
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| How many stocks? | |
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| A 2005 portfolio | |
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| Equal dollar weighting | |
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| A role for cash? | |
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| Tilting toward higher income | |
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| An all-stock "balanced" portfolio | |
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| Summing up | |
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| "The Rules" | |
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| Rules, within a relativistic context | |
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| The rules | |
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| The expected return rule of thumb | |
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| Choose the obvious stock-let everything be in gear | |
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| Academic Studies, Historic Backtests, Real-Time Performance | |
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| Past history can't guarantee the future | |
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| As the dividend rises the stock price will also rise | |
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| Value stocks, subgroup of high yield stocks, subgroup of high dividend-growth stocks | |
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| Firms with lower valuation levels have higher expected returns | |
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| Value strategies yield higher returns | |
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| The tortoise beats the hare | |
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| High returns from high yielding stocks | |
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| Highest yielders outperformed 91% of the time over all rolling ten-year periods | |
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| Maximum loss half as bad as overall market | |
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| Dividend growth reduces volatility in addition to increasing returns | |
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| Signaling by management | |
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| Studies only confirm common sense | |
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| Real-time performance | |
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| High yield stocks have the appearance of a free lunch | |
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| A bit of a mystery | |
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| The Categories of Single Best Investment Stocks | |
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| Every candidate must adhere to the "simple formula" | |
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| Quality elements vary from industry to industry | |
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| Utilities | |
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| Seek a growth kicker, as always | |
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| REITs | |
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| Low debt and net asset value not far below stock price, location location location | |
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| Don't be a yield hog | |
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| Banks | |
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| Seek non-interest income | |
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| Oil and gas | |
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| They've eaten all the fish already | |
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| Major companies | |
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| MLPs and pipelines a good play | |
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| Insurance | |
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| Sensible diversification | |
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| A similar "simple formula" | |
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| Service businesses | |
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| Financial services | |
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| Industrial services | |
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| Brokers | |
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| Outsourcers | |
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| We're hooked! | |
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| Food and "defensives" | |
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| Commodity based | |
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| Rubies and onions in the mud | |
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| Easy money (we ought to do a study) | |
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| Bad odors | |
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| A true once-in-a-lifetime opportunity will never be offered to you | |
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| Information Resources | |
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| A Final Word: The Human Face of Dividends | |
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| Feedback Page | |
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| Index | |
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| About the Author | |