One strategy that has worked well since the 2008 financial crisis has been our Flying Five Portfolio, explains Mark Skousen, an industry-leading growth and dividend expert and editor of Forecasts & Strategies.
In every August issue, I highlight the five Dow stocks with the lowest price from a list of the 10 highest-yielding Dow stocks.
It’s a mechanical technique created by Michael O’Higgins and John Down. In their 1991 book, Beating the Dow, they describe how to beat the stock index by finding bargains in the Dow.
We’ve followed this technical method of finding bargains since 1994, and it works most of the time, although no mechanical system is ever perfect.
It didn’t keep up with the high-tech boom of the late 1990s, and it failed miserably in 2008, when three of our Flying Five stocks stopped paying dividends altogether. But since then, we’ve consistently and dramatically beaten the market with this simple formula.
This past year, 2015-2016, may be our best performing year ever, with a spectacular 26.5% gain compared to 8.8% for the Dow, including dividends.
To review: General Electric (GE) enjoyed a total return of 25.9%. Coca-Cola (KO) rose 17.1%, including dividends. Intel (INTC) climbed 26.3%.
And Verizon (VZ) had the best total return of 26.8%. VZ has a return on equity of 120%, the highest among Dow stocks.
The company also is expanding aggressively, having purchased AOL last year. Verizon’s management now agreed to buy Yahoo this year.
The fifth Flying Five stock was DuPont. It was up 21% since late July when it was bought out by Dow Chemical (DOW) in January.
Thus, in January, I replaced DuPont with Pfizer (PFE), which has since rallied a remarkable 15.6%, including dividends. So together DuPont and Pfizer have returned 36.6%.
Our new Flying Five stocks for 2016-17 are based on the five stocks with the highest dividend yield and lowest price.
We have only two stocks returning to our portfolio: Verizon and Pfizer. To these, we are adding Cisco Systems (CSCO), with a 3.4% yield; Merck (MRK), yielding 3.1%; and Caterpillar (CAT), with a 3.9% yield.
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By Mark Skousen, Editor of Forecasts & Strategies
