First Quarter 2016 

The Connolly Report pretty well follows the investment strategies used by John Maynard Keynes when he ran the Chest Fund at Oxford in the 1920s. The front page of the March 2016 Connolly Report outlines Mr Keynes' three basic strategies (from 1938). I reject Modern Portfolio Theory and follow the old masters (Graham, A. Bernhard, J Burr Williams, G. Loeb ...) to growth wealth.

Are you being deceived by your financial adviser?

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21693975-americas-revolving-door-financial-advisers-who-do-down-their-clients-rotten 


We know mutual funds and ETFs do not work because
  * their portfolios are not concentrated 
  * in quality stocks and because 
  * their portfolios have excessive turnover.

On April Fool's Day I was explaining (inside* this site) quite a few reasons why we should not buy a monthly income fund with a 'distribution yield' of 7½% mentioned in Rob Carrick's column of March 30. Rob's work is usually really good: this time he must have bumped his head.

* For only $50 a year, subscribers get information like this which keeps them from losing thousands of dollars. This is in addition to tons of dividend data inside. This week's project is to show earnings going back ten years, year-by-year and then calculating C.A.P.E* using this data. I then put the 40 stocks in order of cape showing the more reasonably priced stocks on top of the list. I also add a column for five year dividend growth and yield, because, our eventual return, as dividend growth investors, is yield + dividend growth. Don't believe it? Sorry for your poor returns! *cyclically adjusted price to earning - CAPE is a much better valuation tool than the forward-looking estimates touted by industry sell-side analysts. I've been researching dividend patterns full time for 35 years.