The short answer is absolutely, if you work it. The long answer is, well, longer.

I have referenced my grandfather often throughout this book. I do so because he had a profound impact on my formation. The lessons he taught me were based on his experience, the wisdom of which wasn’t fully appreciated until I had my own experience.

My grandfather was not formally educated. He attended some grammar school. But in the agrarian-based culture of eastern Kentucky in the early 1900s, boys in particular were needed for work on the family farm or business. He would often say that he was a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks.

He left his home as a very young man to find a better life than that of his parents and siblings. Work was hard to find, but being resourceful he managed to scrape by. When the Great Depression hit, he returned home to help out my great-grandparents.

My grandfather had many talents, one of which was public speaking. As my great-grandparents were religious, my grandfather was very familiar with the Bible, which he combined with his proclivity for public speaking, and he would preach on the street corners and then pass the hat to pick up some pennies and nickels.

These street-corner collections were then used to finance another of his talents—playing pool for money. When he had sufficient earnings after cleaning up at various pool halls, my grandfather would make his way to the racetrack, where he was quite successful as a horse picker. This was how he supported the family through much of the Great Depression.

One of the odd jobs he had worked at when previously out on the road was commercial painting. When the economy began to improve, my grandfather and his brothers started a commercial painting company and eventually opened a paint and hardware store as well. My grandfather would bid on all the jobs that no one else wanted to take. With little competition, his business grew to be one of the largest in eastern Kentucky.

Although not wise in the ways of the stock market, my grandfather nonetheless understood that his money needed to earn more than it could in the bank, so he began to invest in stocks. Although it is obvious he was not afraid of gambling, he learned through trial and error that speculating on stocks was, as he would later tell me, “a tough row to hoe.” It was through this cauldron of trial and error, though, that he began to learn the necessity of identifying value and the importance of dividends. The stories about the lessons he learned comprised much of my early education.

When I was in college, I took a statistics course. In one of the segments, we used the stock market as a data source for some of the exercises. It was during this time that I stumbled on Benjamin Graham and first read The Intelligent Investor. I remember laughing out loud at various points in the book, because some of what Graham espoused had been taught to me by my grandfather.

I was sharing this with one of the guys in my study group who said, “If you like Graham, you should read Charles Dow.” I took his suggestion and was surprised, once again, that much of Dow’s writings about values was in synch with what my grandfather had learned experientially and passed onto me.

I entered this business in 1984 to follow the passion that had been sown and cultivated by my grandfather for stocks and the stock market. As anyone with intellectual curiosity may expect, I wandered off the dividend-value trail a number of times, engaging in brief flirtations with a number of the “cutting edge” approaches to economics and finance that were born from financial academia. Thankfully, these dalliances were short, but the lessons have been long remembered.

I read my first issue of Investment Quality Trends in 1984 when the owner of the brokerage firm I worked for in La Jolla gave me his copy to read. He told me if I had any sense I would follow Geraldine Weiss’ advice and I would do right by my clients.

When Dividends Don’t Lie was published in 1989, I committed large portions to memory. When I first met Geraldine in 2002 it was a thrill. After all, she is the diva of dividends. Today I have the privilege to be the editor of Investment Quality Trends, as well as the chief investment officer and portfolio manager of IQ Trends Private Client Asset Management.

So back to the question of whether our approach works. The short answer is still yes.

Successful investing in the stock market is not rocket science. It does, however, require discipline, patience, and an appreciation for quality and value. No matter what your goals and objectives, there are high-quality, dividend-paying blue chips to fulfill every need. When purchased at undervalued levels and sold at overvalued levels, your capital and income will grow, which is the sole reason for investing.

I will close as Geraldine always does:

May you and yours know the blessings of the Almighty.