AUG 23, 2010 - Dogs of the Dow is hardly astrological in nature, but it is timely in view of the planetary cycles we're wading through now and for the next ten years or so. I don't think there's much risk of economics crowding out the finer things in life (love, sex, good food, family and friends etc.) - unless, that is, we lose too much of the financial buffers that ward off what Thomas Hobbs called the life of man in the state of nature; which, as you'll recall, tends to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." The vicissitudes of fate are such that all bad things come in time, but doing what we can to enjoy some good times along the way beats the hell out of poke in the eye with a sharp stick. While I've always advocated buying precious metals on the dips, I've also pointed out that there are bubbles even in precious metals. It's true that gold will never be worth nothing - unlike stocks and bonds and currency - but it's also true that if you bought gold at the height of the gold bubble in the early 1980s, you were more than 20 years breaking even on your investment. Heaven help you if you needed some money during those 20 years! That's exactly why you diversify, never putting all your eggs in one basket. I've been putting some of my eggs into dividend-paying stocks lately, when I can buy good shares on the cheap - like, around their 52-week low, for example. Dogs of the Dow helps point you to solid corporate issues that pay dividends generally in excess of anything you can get from bonds or bank accounts - particularly if you buy those shares near their one-year lows. Like AT&T, for example - one of the shares listed by Dogs of the Dow - which could be picked up back in early July very near its one-year low, at a price that translated its dividend into about a 7% yield. (The stock has performed nicely since early July as well, adding appreciation to the return.) I'm no financial adviser, mind you; and I'm not recommending anything here and now - except that you diversify, and give some thought to Dogs of the Dow as a pointer to a few eggs that might go into one of your baskets here and there, if stocks are in your portfolio plans.
