The Grand Dame of Dividends
By Tom Dyson
January 24, 2007

Geraldine Weiss is probably the most famous female investor in the world.

Weiss was the first woman to publish a successful investment newsletter since Evangeline Adams used astrology to pick stocks in the 1920s. She's also written two books on stock picking. Both books are considered investment classics.

The press even calls her "The Grand Dame of Dividends."

Geraldine's mother and father were both investors, so she grew up listening to market talk every night over dinner... which got her interested, too. Then after college, she read every book on investing in the San Diego public library and started testing stock-picking systems. She settled on Benjamin Graham's value-investing approach.

Armed with a technique to beat the market, Weiss started sending out resumes to local brokers and research houses, looking for work. They all came back with the same response:

"Can you type?"

You see, in the '60s, women weren't supposed to work in the investment business. Since no brokerage firm was prepared to give Geraldine a serious job, she decided to go it alone. Her newsletter, IQ Trends, was born in 1966.

Initially, no one would subscribe to Weiss' newsletter... because she was a woman. So for the next 10 years, Weiss signed her letters "G. Weiss," so no one would know. It wasn't until Weiss appeared on the Louis Rukeyser show in the mid-'70s that everyone found out the truth. By that time she says, no one cared because everyone had made so much money from her stock picks.

IQ Trends just celebrated its 41st year in business... and it has beaten the market almost every year of its existence. Of all the newsletters ranked by Hulbert's Digest, IQ Trends placed No. 1 over the last 15, 10, and 5 years for risk-adjusted returns.

Since January 2000, the IQ Trends portfolio has returned 19.1% per year... that's including the worst bear market in 20 years. The secret to her incredible track record? It's all based on dividends.

You see, a good accountant can fudge 99% of the figures on a balance sheet or a profit statement. I spent the best part of five years putting together accounting statements for Citigroup by day and attending professional accounting classes by night, so I know.

There's only one untouchable number in the corporate accounts: the dividend. A dividend is a fact. When companies pay a dividend, they mail out checks to every shareholder. The money leaves the bank and never comes back. There are no assumptions involved.

When a company pays out a dividend, it's saying, "We have cash we don't need." A strong dividend payment, therefore, is almost always the mark of a healthy business that generates lots of cash.

That's the first pillar of Weiss' technique. She only buys stocks with records of paying larger and larger dividends every year for at least 25 consecutive years.

But there's more...

Weiss' system is not so much about the dividend track record, but about the price she pays for the excellent dividend track record...

When investors have high expectations, they will push up the stock price relative to the company's current dividend. The dividend yield falls. When expectations are low, the stock price will fall, and the dividend yield will rise as investors put less value on future cash distributions.

This is the second pillar of Weiss' system. She filters her results for stocks with dividend yields that are higher than their historical average.

Take Coke (KO), for example. It's paid bigger dividends every year for 43 consecutive years. But Weiss will only buy Coke stock when its dividend yield goes over 5%. This tells her investors don't have high expectations for Coke, and she knows she's getting a high-quality business at a discount.

Weiss' system is a little more complicated in reality, but dividend track record and dividend yield are the two most important elements. Here are 10 stocks that would be attractive to Weiss right now:

Wal-Mart, Pfizer, Washington Mutual, Merck, Home Depot, Eaton Vance, AIG, Automatic Data Processing, MAF Corp and Sysco Corp.

You also can invest in a mutual fund that uses Weiss's strategy. They call these funds 'dividend achievers.' BlackRock Dividend Achievers Trust (BDV) and Powershares Dividend Achievers Portfolio (PFM) are two examples. The BlackRock fund trades at a 7% discount to NAV, so you get an even better bargain with that one.

Finally, although Weiss doesn't write IQ Trends anymore – she's retired – it's still in print. You can learn more about the publication at www.iqtrends.com or check out Amazon for her books on dividends...

Editor's note: Tom Dyson is a regular contributor to DailyWealth, a free investment newsletter focused on the world's best contrarian opportunities. We write with a simple belief in mind: You don't have to take big risks to make big money with your investments.

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