Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an article on Dogs of the Dow1, an approach which is having a good year. We wondered if this was just an accident or a random occurrence. So, we created an opposite strategy, the Anti-Dogs (Cats?) of the Dow, which was made up of the ten Dow stocks with the lowest yield in any given year.
The result was impressive, for the Dogs have outperformed the market the past two years and appear equally strong in 2012 while our Cats have underperformed. Particularly surprising was the disparity that we found between the Dow and Dogs in some years (2010/2011), so perhaps we should at least consider this approach more carefully.

1 “History Says These Dogs Are Usually Barking Up the Right Tree”. Wall Street Journal. 8/14/12.