Foreword:
This Book Always Works

The advice in this book works. It keeps you out of dangerous stocks and shows you how to find good stocks that make money over time.

I wrote the first edition in 1996 and 1997, just before the market began its steep ascent into the bubble of the century. Back then, Enron and WorldCom were talked about as must-own companies and the Internet was expected to put so-called old economy companies like Wal-Mart out of business. Who would walk the aisles of a store when they could shop online in their pajamas?

Plenty of us, evidently. In the years following this book’s first publication to early 2012, Wal-Mart stock tripled while most Internet start-ups disappeared and Enron and WorldCom declared bankruptcy. In 2011, Wal-Mart’s annual sales were $450 billion. The two leading Internet merchants at that time, Amazon.com and eBay, had annual sales of only $48 billion and $12 billion, respectively.

The subprime crash of 2008 destroyed famous companies like AIG (-97 percent), Bear Stearns (-100 percent), Lehman Brothers (-100 percent), and General Motors (-100 percent). Wal-Mart stock, however, gained 20 percent in 2008. It increased sales and cash flow per share in every one of the previous 10 years, and did so again in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. Had you invested $10,000 in Wal-Mart at the beginning of 1975, it would have been worth $60 million at the end of 2011 thanks to the company’s steady growth and nine 2-for-1 stock splits.

This book would have kept you out of Enron, WorldCom, the dot-com disasters, and the likes of Lehman Brothers. It would not have kept you out of the market’s volatility, and no approach to stocks will. The market is volatile in the short term and rises over the long term.

On that path, you want companies like Wal-Mart working for your money. This book shows you how to find them. Its methods win in flat markets, rising markets, and falling markets because superior companies always come out on top.

Invest in them and you’ll come out on top, too.

I also present a value-averaging technique that produces steady 3 percent quarterly growth, and bold index strategies for beating the market over time. The Dow dividend strategies and my doubling strategies for the Dow and S&P MidCap 400 offer excellent profit potential. When combined with methods to limit market weakness, they work wonders on your wealth.

This book is packed with advice that you can use right away. Read it, follow it, and watch your net worth grow.

Neatest Little
Guide to
Stock Market
Investing