There are other ways to invest in stocks. One was introduced in the 2004 book The Little Book That Beats The Market by Joel Greenblatt, a renowned academic and investor. In the book he recommends a fairly simple investment formula which had stellar results when tested over a 17 year period ending in 2004: it had an average annual return of 30.8% and turned an $11,000 investment into more than $1 million! However, in an updated version of the book the author encourages most investors to go with S&P 500 index funds, because such index funds have a decent return, while stock picking, even using his formula, requires a lot more patience and few people have the tolerance needed for the huge losses that occur in some years. More importantly, the formula has been tested in more recent years and has performed worse than the overall stock market, largely because the investment landscape is now vastly different (in the tested period from 1987 to 2004 e-commerce hardly existed, there was no Facebook or smart phones, and neither Apple nor Amazon had become the behemoths they are today). If you're still interested in picking stocks (perhaps 10% of your money, with the other 90% in an S&P 500 index fund), this website discusses the formula and its shortcomings, and presents a slightly more complex strategy that has performed significantly better in recent times. OTHER STOCK INVESTMENT APPROACHES
by Ernesto R. Martin
Another approach, developed by Paul A. Merriman*, is relatively easy to implement and has historically shown greater returns than an investment in an S&P 500 index fund. The scheme simply divides your investment equally into four different index funds: the S&P 500 (which, as mentioned previously, consists of the largest U.S. companies and is weighed towards growth stocks like Apple and Amazon
that are expensive because the companies have rapidly expanding revenues and profits), an index fund that invests in the stock of large value companies (like banks, Walt Disney and AT&T, where the stocks are cheaper because of moderate growth), an index fund that invests in a blend of smaller companies (both growth and value), and an index fund that invests in smaller value companies. The names of the recommended index funds are shown at right and you can find details here. The approach, in addition to historic performance superior to investing only in an S&P 500 index fund, has less volatility because of the greater diversification. I would favor a variation, where you don't divide your investment equally among these four funds but instead have a higher concentration in the S&P 500 index fund, something like 40% in S&P 500 and 20% in each of the other 3 funds.
A third approach, called the Dobermans Of The Dow, invests in 10 companies adjusted at the start of each year and has generated over the last 23 years a cumulative return of 1,352% compared to 698% for the Dow Jones Index (the Dow Index has an annual performance very similar to that of the S&P 500 Index). The approach, including the methodology for selecting the 10 stocks to buy at the start of each year, may be found here.
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* Paul A. Merriman is a financial educator and advisor on mutual funds, index investing, and asset allocation. As an author and speaker, he has led investor workshops, hosted a weekly radio program and has been a featured guest on television shows. In 2011 he formed an LLC to support the PBS project "Financial Fitness After 50" and the "How To Invest" series of print and eBooks.
