Geraldine Weiss The first woman to break the glass ceiling of Wall Street

 

American Geraldine Weiss (Schmulovitz) became a successful investor at the same time as such stars as Warren Buffett, John Bogle, and Peter Lynch. Against their background, she hardly had a chance to become famous, especially since she never managed any company other than her own. However, she forever went down in history as the author of the original investment strategy and "the first woman to break the glass ceiling of Wall Street."

Geraldine Weiss's career began in the 1960s and 1990s, when she, overcoming the mistrust of others, created the Investment Quality Trends newsletter. In the first issue of a newsletter from 1966, she published a list of 100 shares in which she herself had successfully invested. Among them were 34 "undervalued", including Colgate Palmolive, General Motors and IBM. The trial edition was released in two versions: with the signature of Geraldine and identical with the signature of her male partner. The client ignored this lady's mailing list, so the next number will be the neutral "G. Weiss." It wasn't until 1970 that Geraldine decided that gender would not hurt her career and allowed herself to appear on television. “By that time, my subscribers were making so much money that they didn't care,” she recalls.

In 2003, 77-year-old Weiss retired but continues to participate in the management of Investment Quality Trends. On average over the past thirty years, the listings of this bulletin's stocks have brought in 11.2% per year, compared with the market average of 9.8%.

Geraldine Weiss strategy

The uniqueness of Weiss's investment approach is that it uses only one criterion for evaluating shares - dividends. In her words, “people who ignore the importance of dividends when choosing securities are not investors. They are speculators. " At the same time, dividends are viewed not as a source of income, but as an analysis tool. Initially, Weiss used Benjamin Graham's method to find undervalued and overvalued companies, but later developed her own dividend yield scoring system. “After much research, I noticed that high and low levels of return were repeated. A repetition of high yield should indicate an undervalued area (time to buy), a repetition of low yield should indicate an overvalued area (time to sell). "

In her books Dividends Don't Lie (1988) and The Dividend Connection (1995), the investor detailed the principles by which he selects issuers.

            Blue chips only.

 

"To save time and shorten the path to profit, and most importantly, to minimize risk, the theory of dividend yield must be applied to the most prosperous and progressive corporations."

 

            Payment of dividends for at least 25 years.

 

            At least five million shares outstanding.

 

            At least 80 institutional investors.

 

            The S&P rating is not lower than “A”.

 

            Growth of dividends by seven or more times over the past 12 years.

 

            Debt <20% of market value.

 

            The ratio of dividends to earnings <50%.

 

            Current liquidity ratio> 2.

 

            The shares are sold at half the book value or less. The price/profit ratio is not more than 20.

 

Geraldine recommends selling if:

            dividends declined;

 

            stock returns have fallen to medium or low;

 

            the company's financial strength has fallen into disrepair.

General recommendations.

            The portfolio should contain between ten and twenty shares. (As of 2017, Weiss considered only forty stocks on the market eligible, including Boeing, Coca-Cola, IBM, Union Pacific, and Wal-Mart.)

 

            In times of crisis, you can confidently rely on only three areas: food, medicine, and utilities.

In 2010, the sequel to Dividends Never Lie, written by the current chief editor of Investment Quality Trends, Kelly Wright, was released. It can be found under the title “Dividends Still Don't Lie. The Truth About Investing in Blue Chip Stocks and Winning in the Stock Market. "