I have been reading and following JP's "dividend plus dividend growth" approach for over a year. I have also read his book and Pat Dorsey's book "The Little Book That Builds Wealth" which describes how M* selects stocks with a moat. A very good book by the way. JP has a very conservative investment philosphy, probably for at least 2 good reasons. One he is playing with $200K of M*'s money and a has a responsibility to protect M*'s reputation. He also has a personal interest and responsibility in  modeling the dividend approach to investing. He is very thorough and I think does an excellent job almost to a fault. But he, like us all, have our personal biases when it comes to investing. I don't think one can go astray if they just duplicated his portfolios. The only problem I have with him is he seems to churn his stocks a lot always looking for the perfect portfolio. He seems super sensitive to insuring the dividend is safe and meeting his percentage guidlines that he will dump a stock even if their is a remote chance in his mind of missing his percentage change guidlines. I realize that is what guidlines are for but he is supersensitive. This seems contradictory to dividend investing for the long term. Since he is only in his third year of portfolio building maybe he will trade less when he feels his selections are good enough for the Builder's and Harvest portfolios. Like Russ says I use him for my "dividend stock expert" but make my own investment decisions.

 aurel