No. of Recommendations: 20
A 50/50 split between this and the S&P 500 would, from 1996 to 2002, have generated nearly twice the annualised excess returns (over cash) of the S&P 500 index alone.
Interesting observations, though it might be worth remembering Goodhart's Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
There is a LOT of money targeting constant volatility and similar models these days, which is starting to have some perverse side effects. And the Dividend Aristocrats became a great place to find some dead-enders once they figured out they could get into that index by making trivial dividend increases regularly. The current crop has median 10-year sales growth per share of only 4%, so I wouldn't buy the whole set. For about a fifth of them, dividends have not risen as fast as inflation in the last 5 years.
Jim
