Dogs of the Dow

The Dogs of the Dow is a fairly simple mechanical investment strategy.

It can be described fairly briefly: pick the 10 highest yield shares in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and put an equal amount of money into each of them. Adjust the portfolio once a year so that it once again has equal amounts in the top ten shares by yield.

The strategy has become so popular that there are even two special Dow Jones indices (the Dow 5 and the Dow 10) that track the performance of Dogs of the Dow type strategies.

The track record of this type of value investing is fairly good, and it is certainly a strategy worth considering.

It also has the advantage of requiring a portfolio re-balancing only once a year which means that trading costs are low. Using an execution only broker who charges a flat rate per trade, the maximum possible commission paid per year is just twenty times the commission per trade. It is likely to be much lower.