Shareholder Yield
NO EDGEDividends plus net buybacks (and, in Priest's version, net debt paydown) measure cash returned to holders better than dividends alone.
| THE STRATEGY | $SPX BUY & HOLD | |
|---|---|---|
| Growth a year (CAGR) | 4.4% | 8.8% |
| Return per unit of risk (Sharpe) | 0.32 | 0.65 |
| Worst fall (max drawdown) | -70.8% | -52.6% |
// GROWTH OF $1, LOG SCALE
Tested on years it never saw (from the split): -0.4% a year against 12.4% for the benchmark; Sharpe 0.46 in the training years, 0.10 after.
After 25 bps of trading costs: 3.5% a year. BELOW RANDOM
// DECADE BY DECADE
| ERA | STRATEGY | BENCHMARK |
|---|---|---|
| 1990s | 5.8% | 15.8% |
| 2000s | 2.0% | -2.6% |
| 2010s | 10.0% | 11.6% |
| 2020s | -1.7% | 14.1% |
// THE IDEA, AS PUBLISHED
Priest & McClelland, Free Cash Flow and Shareholder Yield (2007); Faber, Shareholder Yield (2013) · 2007
- Shareholder yield = (dividends + net buybacks + net debt reduction) / market cap
- Common variant drops debt paydown
- Buy the highest-yield names; rebalance periodically
A real computation on the QuantGPT warehouse, survivorship-free, walk-forward. Gross returns, no costs except where stated. Past performance is not a promise. Findings, not advice. COMPUTED 2026-09-24 20:47 ON THE QUANTGPT WAREHOUSE. COMPANIES THAT LATER DELISTED ARE NOT IN THIS UNIVERSE YET (A FIX IS IN PROGRESS), SO THE RESULT LEANS TOWARD SURVIVORS. FUNDAMENTALS BY FILING DATE. NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE.