Customer Reviews

The Single Best Investment: Creating Wealth with Dividend Growth

5 star:		(13)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

this is a great book. O'Higgin's book on buying the Dogs of the Dow was a good book, and it made sense: buy quality when it is cheap. Well, Miller's book makes sense, too. In fact, it makes so much sense, that you wonder "why, of course, that's the way to make money". This book reminds you how important dividends are (some 70% of stocks' returns over the past 50 years), and how significant compounding can be. ("yeah, yeah, yeah" you say, but how about 20+% annual return per year on an investment in a solid, low risk company? Miller tells you how.) Though this is not the kind of book that appeals to day-traders, or "hot stock" investors, it is the kind of book that should appeal to smart investors.

This is an important but easy-to read book that argues that the single best investment is in stocks with rising dividends. It hits a layer of real bedrock, providing a long-term fundamental perspective that is a great antidote to the information overload that is typical of investment information today. Applying this approach is a low risk way to create a "compounding machine" that relentlessly grinds out income and capital appreciation over the long-term. It is a book both for both beginning as well as experienced investors, and is well-written and organized with excellent summaries at the end of each chapter.

This is a really good book!

The Single Best Investment provides a detailed step-by-step guide to investing in high quality dividend-growth stocks that will produce increasing returns over the long run without increased risk exposure. Investing in these easy to hold stocks saves you from the hassle of following the markets' ups and downs on a daily basis. A sensible plan based on real financial facts, not the latest market fad; this strategy will work just as well 50 years from now as it does today. As signs show that a slow down in the recent bull market is at hand, following Miller's plan makes even more sense for investors because it promises returns without the usual market anxiety.

As a business major I've read a countless number of dry books on the subjects of stock picking and market analysis, but this book breaks that mold. It is an easy read that presents a simple plan for investing in growing stocks with rising dividends. Your returns will compound over time through market highs and lows. Miller suggests you follow his investment steps and then forget about them, ignoring the markets' daily fluctuations and the contradicting theories of analysts. Excellent advice at a time when there is too much information being made available to too many people all of the time. This book is a must for all serious investors, it explains how to successfully achieve the profits we all desire without the risks.

I am a great fan of passive index funds. I also hate the idea of owning bonds and have toyed with the idea of replacing bonds in my asset allocation with high dividend stocks from high quality companies. Historically, high dividend stocks from high quality companies have declined less than the S&P 500 in Bear Markets. The current 15% tax rate on dividends is also more favorable to holding high dividend paying stocks in taxable accounts.

Miller hates bonds as much as I do......and advocates a 100% stock portfolio several times in the book.

Miller contends that an investor can construct a 100% stock portfolio that has lower risk and a higher return than a conventional 60:40 stock and bond portfolio.

Miller repeats the age old saying that "Dividends Don't Lie".......and we recently learned about how many managements can lie ala Enron and WorldCom. Miller calls the period 1990-2003 the Dividend Dark Ages where companies reduced the amounts of dividends paid and focused on increase stock prices.......including creative accounting....so executives stock options would be worth more to them.

Miller gives specific guidelines on how to select high quality companies with great prospects for long term increases in dividend growth.

Although Miller is more an active versus a passive investor, his technicques are likely to yield returns close to index fund returns.

Over-all an interesting read and his suggestion to replace a 60:40 conventional stock and bond portfolio with 100% dividend paying stocks is great food for thought.

I would suggest companion books to supplement this book including:
The Richest Man in Babylon
Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor
The Millionaire Next Door
The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition

The Coffeehouse Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get On With Your Life
The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing
Wealth: Grow It, Protect It, Spend It, and Share It
All About Asset Allocation.

The material presented lays out basic concepts of compounding as applied to dividend growth (income) and capital appreciation. Satisfied with not having to hit them out of the park, Miller presents concepts for the prudent investor that is one of the more gratifying and "rational" approaches I have seen. Summaries at the end of the chapter would be a quick way to familiarize yourself with the content. Once the basic concepts are in place, for what makes a successful candidate, easy to understand and yet rigorous tests are used to select the best investments. Not pedantic, this book offers much useful information for novice and seasoned investor alike with easy to find tools and organization to guide the process of stock selection. This book is not for the wired generation or for the speculator. It contains fundamental principals that govern the accumulation of wealth over time, something quite unpopular today. Some drawbacks are; 1. the adamant refusal of the author to admit the benefits of Technical Analysis in selling and 2. the benefits of stable growth companies without dividends. Still in all, the treatise is too important to ignore in anyone's asset allocation.

The author tells you everything you could possibly want to know about his investment strategy of buying growth stocks with rising dividends. If you just want to know the heart of the strategy, start with Chapter 10, The Rules. The other chapters have a summary at the end. This strategy is not for your typical system player / day trader, it's for a young person with a low risk tolerance.

"Single Best Investment" is an intelligent, easy to understand and yet a rather entertaining book that should be of equal interest to a wide spectrum of investors, from beginners to professionals. Based on a common sense approach of time value and compounding, it guides investors toward creating portfolios that will result in consistent returns without playing the market. "Single Best Investment" is one of the few proven and effective strategies that make sense to investors around the world and will never go out of style.

Investors may use a passive approach, employing index funds a la Jack Bogle (Bogle on Mutual Funds). If an investor wants a more active approach, however, the dividend-based approach in this book offers one of the best and safest strategies available. Investing in undervalued large companies that not only consistently pay dividends but that increase them every year sounds like a boring approach -- and it is. No following trends, no guessing about market movements. Companies that consistently increase dividends tend to grow faster and with less volatility than companies that either do not pay dividends or pay them but don't increase them. Miller gives readers everything they need to implement this approach. There are other dividend stock books out there, but this one is one of the best -- maybe the best one available. Investors take note!

I read geraldine weiss investment books, and made up my mind to keep studying dividend investing; actually it is one of the best strategies to employ in hard markets like the one we are experiencing; the volatiliy is relatively low compared to other different strategies, and long term results could be substantial.
Good and well researched book