Many investors think high-dividend stocks and “fallen angels” are safer bets. After all, value investing is often positioned as the conservative alternative to growth. But the numbers tell a different story:
📉 Value investing has underperformed the S&P by about 10 percentage points per year.
📈 Growth investing tends to outperform value, though even the best growth funds average only 9 points above the S&P.
🛑 Dividends? They’re not “extra” performance—just a return of capital when companies can’t find better uses for cash.
🔄 Buying fallen stocks is one of the reasons most investors lag behind the S&P, which consistently rewards rising companies (think SPY, TQQQ).

Even Warren Buffett, the gold standard of value investing, has acknowledged how difficult it is to beat the S&P. His hedge fund challenge proved it—none lasted.

Meanwhile, the S&P itself has averaged 13% annually over the past 14 years.
👉 So if Buffett himself is struggling to win with value investing, why would the average investor expect to?

That’s why I’ve built the Stars model, a long-term growth approach that has outperformed the S&P by a factor of 17 over the past 26 years. It’s proof that disciplined, buy-and-hold growth investing can work far better than chasing dividends or “cheap” stocks.

The real risk isn’t growth—it’s sticking to outdated strategies that consistently trail the market.