Product Description

A pioneer in the financial media, Dick Davis has interacted with the investing public for over forty years. With his new book, he continues this trend. The first part of The Dick Davis Dividend contains an easy-to-read, yet profound discussion of the essentials of investing—focusing on the savvy veteran’s often unconventional, core beliefs. While the second part of this engaging guide makes a compelling case for combining both passive investing via index funds and active investing via stocks and mutual funds.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #108706 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 471 pages

From the Inside Flap
What can you say about how to make money in the stock market that hasn't been said before? How many different ways can you say buy good stocks cheap, diversify, hold on, and control your emotions?

The Dick Davis Dividend doesn't avoid these basic concepts but it spotlights others, which are seldom discussed, that the author believes will strongly tilt the odds toward investors and give them a valuable edge. These are passionately held convictions expressed with unusual candor and clarity.

A pioneer in the financial media, Dick Davis has interacted with the investment public as a radio and TV broadcaster, newsletter editor, columnist, lecturer, and teacher for over forty years. With The Dick Davis Dividend, he continues this trend. The first part of the book contains an easy-to-read, yet profound discussion of the essentials of investing—focusing on the savvy veteran's often unconventional, core beliefs. For example, Davis pounds the table about the over-exaggerated value of homework, the irrelevance of news, the underappreciated durability of major trends, the predisposition of investors to fail, the curse of being totally and instantly informed, and the rarely acknowledged role of pure luck.

Davis' bluntly honest approach is reflected in some of the chapter headings: "Absolutely Nobody Knows the Answers," "There's Always an Exact Opposite Opinion," "The Market Is Always King," and "After You Buy It'll Always Go Lower."

The second part of this engaging guide makes a compelling case for combining both passive investing via index funds and active investing via stocks and mutual funds. Davis focuses on twenty-eight buy and hold, diversified, index fund model portfolios. Each one is recommended by a leading authority in the world of indexing. Included are the favorite index portfolios of Burton Malkiel, John Bogle, Ben Stein, Jonathan Clements, and twenty-four others. The wide selection of models makes a passive/active strategy easy to implement.

The Dick Davis Dividend is filled with in-depth insight and straightforward, practical advice labeled "timeless wisdom" by bestselling author Andrew Tobias. It is an uncomplicated explanation of how today's investor can meet the challenge of an unpredictable market and come out a winner.

From the Back Cover
Praise for The Dick Davis Dividend

"The Dick Davis Dividend is a delightful read and is packed with useful advice for investors. The recommended strategy—index most of the portfolio and actively manage the rest—is likely to improve performance, lower risk, and still allow investment junkies to have fun picking individual stocks and funds. It's what I do myself."
—Burton G. Malkiel, author, A Random Walk Down Wall Street

"Dick Davis' new book is a gem...packed with wise, down-to-earth advice for the long-term investor. The investing public needs more Dutch Uncle advice like this. It is worthy of broad readership. I have a general policy of not giving book blurbs, which gives me the freedom to make an exception when a truly exceptional manuscript crosses my desk."
—Knight Kiplinger, Editor in Chief, The Kiplinger Letter and Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine

"For forty years, Dick Davis has been dispensing the best investment advice from the best analysts in the world. He is a true national investment wisdom treasure. The Dick Davis Dividend is the highlight of a long and successful career guiding investors in their search for profits and security. Each page is jam-packed with the best that forty years of unmatched research and incredible contacts can offer. This is a book that you will read and re-read over and over again."
—John Mauldin, author, Bull's Eye Investing and Editor of Thoughts from the Frontline

"The great thing about Dick Davis' advice—with 900f which I agree and about the other 100f which I am likely just wrong—is that it's basically timeless."
—Andrew Tobias, author, The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need

"I have known Dick Davis for about thirty-five years. His new book, The Dick Davis Dividend, is straightforward, sound advice. I highly recommend reading it!"
—Marty Zweig, Partner, Zweig-DiMenna, LLC

"The Dick Davis Dividend is an amazingly complete book covering not only the major aspects of investing but also capturing the nuances and exceptions that are so important. As we would expect from Dick, the writing is bright, engaging, and exceptionally clear. I recommend the book to all individual investors and think it will also help broaden the view of investment professionals."
—James B. Cloonan, Chairman and founder, American Association of Individual Investors

About the Author
Dick Davis is one of the most widely known and highly respected market commentators of his time. He founded The Dick Davis Digest in1982, one of the nation'slargest investment news-letters, and pioneered stock market reporting via television and radio. Davis also wrote a stock market column for the Miami Herald—which was syndicated to over 100 newspapers—for over ten years. Born in Yonkers, New York, Davis lived in Miami for forty-five years and in Boca Raton since 1992.

Customer Reviews

The best investment book I have read
I have been investing for about 3 years now. I am 27 years old. I wish this had been my first book on investing. It probably would have been my only one. Dick Davis is VERY realistic. There are no get rich quick schemes. No mathmatical equations, no B.S.. he is very honoest and very informative. I would suggest this book to anyone who owns a stock, is thinking of buyin a stock, or is curious about investing. Wonderful!!!

This One's A Keeper
Great stuff!
Having read most everything by Bogle, Swensen, Bernstein, Swedroe, et. al., I found "Dividend" refreshing for it's objective take on the financial industry and the media's daily coverage of same. Yes, you've likely heard much of this elsewhere, yet not likely so well organized and presented. And yes, the book is long, but well worth a read - or two. I particularly enjoyed the broad coverage of passive portfolios. Dick Davis encourages exploration and critical questioning, to find what works for you.
Highly recommended.

A Long Read
If you think this review is long, wait until you see the book - 454 pages.

I don't feel satisfied with the book. The reviews for it were great, it was recommended on a popular investment blog, I expected a lot. As someone who has been investing for several years, I don't think I got what I expected.

Without the preface, acknowledgments, etc, the book is 454 pages long; it's well written and well organized. But the first 50 pages are about Dick Davis, his early childhood, how much he enjoyed his summer camp, etc. I think I learned more about Mr Davis than I need to know.

One useful thing identified in the first part of the book is how Mr Davis operated as a media commentator and later as author of his newsletter, The Dick Davis Digest. Mr Davis writes that he was not comfortable recommending stock, bonds, and investments, so he focused on reporting what OTHERS were recommending, always trying to present a balanced view. I concluded that's the format for the rest of the book - what other people think with some input from Mr Davis, and of course Davis selected the people and work he's cited. I do think he tried to present a balanced view, or at least a view that is not so presumptive as to imply "this is the only way to do it, anything else is wrong!".

My basic frustration with the book is that I concluded that Davis was summarizing (often with other peoples words or work) what he has been led to believe are truths about the stock market, how to invest in it, etc, as opposed to presenting specific information that has worked well for him and why - there's a big difference. If you've been paying attention to mainstream commentary over the years, you've probably heard most of what's in the book. For example, at one point Davis argues that index investing is the way to go because so many experts use index investing; that argument left me cold, I'd like to see some numbers that lay out an irrefutable case. I'm not sure there is an irrefutable case.

Other examples: Mr Davis is comfortable with a portfolio of 80% passive investments (index funds) and 20% active investments (almost anything else). Why 80/20? My sense is that it's a consensuses number based on what investment luminaries he's dealt with have hit upon. No original analyses, it's probably ball-park right, just go with the flow.

Mr Davis presents 28, as I recall, lazy portfolios that were developed by investment luminaries. Enroute we learn that Andrew Tobias is concerned with gay issues and that Jim Lowell lectures on philosophy and religion and is an avid sports fisherman - why do I care? What we don't get is any sense as to how well the portfolios have performed in comparison to each other over a common time frame. Seems to me that without considerable analyses regarding the performance and relative performances of the portfolios we are left simply with a collection of hypothetical portfolios - which to me amounts to trivia.

He discusses mutual funds vice ETFs, and you've probably heard the tradeoffs before.

In fairness, Mr Davis does include several good resource lists for things like classic investment books, newsletters, financial blogs, etc. I've seen similar lists in other publications, but having them all drawn together in one book has value.

If you are a beginning investor perhaps this book has value, you may not have heard or read about some of the topics covered and it may offer some issues for you to think about. If you've been investing for even a few years, you've likely seen or heard nearly all the investment material covered in the book. Either way, it's a long read.