Rating: 
Summary: Not a totally bad method of choosing stocks
Review: "Beating The Dow" by Michael O'Higgins offers the following simple investment strategy. You simply buy the ten highest dividend paying stocks among the Dow Industrial Averages. The Philosophy is that as the value of the stocks increase, via stock price lagging or falling below the market, the dividend yield will tend to rise. (i.e. the assumption is that dividend yield is a proxy for value. One problem is that not all Dow stocks pay out the same level of earnings, so some stocks will tend to have higher dividends.)While I tend to be skeptical of any investment strategy that is too simple, if you must use such a simple strategy, then you could do far worse selecting the highest dividend paying stocks from the Dow. Of course, the other option is just to index your money in a mutual fund that buys the entire stock market. Vanguard Funds is the leader in such index funds. But, I like dividends. The difficulty with simple investment strategies is that they tend to be arrived at via data mining. The proponent of the investment method asks "What worked in the past?" and then tries to draw up a canned investment method. Almost always, the proposed method then starts to lag behind in the present and future stock market performance. (the recent performance of this strategy is discussed in another person's great book review. See that.) This is not due to market efficiency or that the method is becoming well known. It just means that the method wasn't entirely valid as a predictive method. There is the old joke about the "X investment strategy." When a computer was asked to vigorously evaluate the stock market and look for predictors of future investment success, the computer spit back the answer, "Invest in stocks whose name begins with an 'X' and whose name ends with an 'X.' " Xerox was the top performing stock over the period. "Beating The Dow" is one of those books, if read all by itself, might mislead a new investor into an over-simplified investment strategy. Yet, you might enjoy reading it. And, as stated, you could do worse than holding the ten highest dividend-paying Dow stocks. "Beating The Dow" also mentions what Michael O'Higgins calls the "Penulatimate Profit Prospect (PPP)" which involves buying just one stock. The Stock with the second lowest price among the ten highest yielding stocks. I consider that Penidiotic. We conservative investors do love our stock dividends, and the focus on dividend yield gets "Beating The Dow" a solid honorable mention. Peter Hupalo, Author of "Becoming An Investor: Building Wealth By Investing In Stocks, Bonds, And Mutual Funds."
Rating:
Summary: Not a totally bad method of choosing stocks
Review: "Beating The Dow" by Michael O'Higgins offers the following simple investment strategy. You simply buy the ten highest dividend paying stocks among the Dow Industrial Averages. The Philosophy is that as the value of the stocks increase, via stock price lagging or falling below the market, the dividend yield will tend to rise. (i.e. the assumption is that dividend yield is a proxy for value. One problem is that not all Dow stocks pay out the same level of earnings, so some stocks will tend to have higher dividends.) While I tend to be skeptical of any investment strategy that is too simple, if you must use such a simple strategy, then you could do far worse selecting the highest dividend paying stocks from the Dow. Of course, the other option is just to index your money in a mutual fund that buys the entire stock market. Vanguard Funds is the leader in such index funds. But, I like dividends. The difficulty with simple investment strategies is that they tend to be arrived at via data mining. The proponent of the investment method asks "What worked in the past?" and then tries to draw up a canned investment method. Almost always, the proposed method then starts to lag behind in the present and future stock market performance. (the recent performance of this strategy is discussed in another person's great book review. See that.) This is not due to market efficiency or that the method is becoming well known. It just means that the method wasn't entirely valid as a predictive method. There is the old joke about the "X investment strategy." When a computer was asked to vigorously evaluate the stock market and look for predictors of future investment success, the computer spit back the answer, "Invest in stocks whose name begins with an 'X' and whose name ends with an 'X.' " Xerox was the top performing stock over the period. "Beating The Dow" is one of those books, if read all by itself, might mislead a new investor into an over-simplified investment strategy. Yet, you might enjoy reading it. And, as stated, you could do worse than holding the ten highest dividend-paying Dow stocks. "Beating The Dow" also mentions what Michael O'Higgins calls the "Penulatimate Profit Prospect (PPP)" which involves buying just one stock. The Stock with the second lowest price among the ten highest yielding stocks. I consider that Penidiotic. We conservative investors do love our stock dividends, and the focus on dividend yield gets "Beating The Dow" a solid honorable mention. Peter Hupalo, Author of "Becoming An Investor: Building Wealth By Investing In Stocks, Bonds, And Mutual Funds."
Rating:
Summary: Provides useful insites to the Dow for novice investors
Review: "Beating the Dow" is well organized book offering insights into the Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJA). The author provides a background summary of each of the thirty- one stocks making up the DJA.
A spreadsheet approach is presented allowing the reader to analyze each stock comprising the DJA, establish a ranking of the stocks, and pick your portofolio of two of three DJA stocks.
Rating: 
Summary: The numbers speak for themselves
Review: Day traders often laugh at O'Higgins as their returns beat his. But keep in mind it takes a total moron not to make a killing in the market these past few years. Wait until the next recession and the day traders have all thrown themselves into NY Harbor. O'Higgins' system will still be blowing away the averages. You are a fool to not buy this book. Especially if you are a casual investor. When he says his system takes 5 minutes per year he is not kidding, and year after year his system will blow away those mutual funds you have your money in now.
Rating:
Summary: Great low risk, high return strategy that works.
Review: I have never found a better investment tool that combines high returns with low risk. I have personally used this strategy for the last three years and it works great. It does not require a lot of effort and you only have to make changes once a year. Highly recommended
Rating:
Summary: The best "stratagy" that I know of.
Review: I have the book and have used the "High Yield 5" method since 1995. The results have beaten all other methods of investment that I have used and with the least amount of effort. I also enjoy the feeling of comfort involved with owning the various DJIA 30 stocks. Even if the share price drops, I know that in time it will recover! I'm convinced that in the long term, equities give the best return and that market timing is to risky and difficult. This method is so easy and the best news is that it works.
Rating:
Summary: I found the pot at the end of the rainbow
Review: I know it sounds corny, but I feel that I found the pot at the end of the rainbow. I knew if there was some way that I could get the best of the Dow 30 that I could make money on a regular basis. But which ones? One day while my wife and I were at the library she hands me Beating The Dow, I read it that evening and I got my answer to "which ones". Without hesitation I started a portfolio and have stuck with the stratagy for several years. The book is easy to read and very informative. It gives a rundown on all the Dow stocks with easy to read charts and statistics. I wish this book was around 20 years ago. P.S. I purchased the book!
Rating:
Summary: fun to read, not so sure about the math!
Review: i liked reading this book from the historical point of view. it kind of tells you the names of people who started a business and how things went belly-up for a while. the investment methods presented are very basic and fun to read. i think i can trust my math, however, i am not sure how michael added up his percentages. he has tables of total returns all over the book. looking at any one of them and for example on pages 193-194, how did he come up with such cumulatives ? if he totaled each column separately and got the numbers. then the added sums are incorrect.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Investment Strategy
Review: I started using the beating the Dow strategy last June and picked MO, T, UK, CAT & IP. Over the six month period I have "beat the Dow" due to stellar performance of MO & T. UK and CAT have prevented this portfolio from extraordinary performance. Using relative strength index to help time the picks would have helped avoid buying UK and CAT at near their 52 week highs. Beating the Dow is a good way to get into buying stocks without great risk.
Rating:
Summary: Well written!!!
Review: Interesting idea and successful strategy. What I liked most was the lucid and clear style in which it was written. Easily understood by anyone no matter their extent of business or investment knowledge.
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