The Dividend Theories of John Burr Williams, Part II: Investing versus Speculating

This is the second blog in a series exploring the theories of John Burr Williams. You can read the first post here.

John Burr Williams’ book, The Theory of Investment Value, was not about beating the market or getting rich in the market.  It was really a wake-up call to the investment elite to offer them a theory of investment value that would encourage more long-term investing and less speculation.  Williams postulated that investors’ inability to properly value stocks increasingly led them to become speculators. Most people would not admit that they were speculators, but it was clear by their decisions that they were not appraising the intrinsic value of companies but betting that they knew something that the market did not.

ABCs of Dividend Investing: John Burr Williams, The Father of Dividend Investing Still Speaks

Because we have long espoused John Burr Williams' theories of dividend investing, we are often asked why he focused on dividends and not on earnings in determining a stock's value.  This prioritizing of dividends ahead of earnings was controversial in 1937 when he published his book, The Theory of Investment Value, and it remains so today.

This is Part I of a series of three blogs in which we will describe who John Burr Williams was, why he believed dividends trumped earnings in determining the intrinsic value of a company, and finally, why his theories on economic growth matter so much today.

In 1937 near the end of the worst bear market in US history, Williams, a thirty-five year old Harvard doctoral student in economics, made the following statement in his thesis: 

“The investment value of a stock is the present worth of all future dividends to be paid upon it . . . discounted at the pure [risk less] interest rate demanded by the investor.”

Mr. Williams’ dissertation did not immediately earn him his doctorate.  That would not be forthcoming until 1940.  Prior to his final oral exam, he sold the rights to his thesis to Harvard University Press, who published his dissertation as a book, but only with Mr. Williams subsidizing a portion of the costs. 

It would seem that only a fool would sell his doctoral thesis before he had been granted the degree. Williams, however, who was already a successful Wall Street investor when he went back to Harvard, explained that he had returned to college to learn what had caused the 1930s stock market crash (and the subsequent economic depression) from the best minds possible.  Since he had come for the knowledge and not the degree, and since his work was complete, he wanted to share his findings with the public as quickly as possible. 

What he did not say at the time, but would later admit, was that because of some of the views he had expressed in his thesis, he had become persona non-grata with key Harvard professors and was unlikely to have been awarded the degree anyway. 

Blaming the Bureaucrats 

His troubles with the dons of the school of economics were many but were centered in two areas: (1) Williams claimed that the correct method for determining the intrinsic value of a company was by calculating the present value of its future dividend payments, not earnings as was the universal belief at the time, and (2) he voiced great skepticism of the theories of John Maynard Keynes and the New Deal programs of President Franklin Roosevelt.  Williams devoted an entire chapter in the book entitled "Taxes and Socialism" to debunking the notion that the redistribution of wealth could lead a country to prosperity.

Finally, in 1940, with the book drawing praise from important financial commentators, and his success as an investor gaining accolades, John Burr Williams went before the Harvard dons to seek his doctorate. 

As expected, he was soundly criticized for publishing the thesis before he had obtained his doctorate, and his professors were upset that he did not embrace Keynes’ teachings. Oddly enough, however, they did not dispute his dividend-centric theory of investment value but questioned if a thesis studying the valuation of stocks had enough significance to justify a doctorate in economics from Harvard.  After a heated debate, he was granted his doctorate. 

The truth is often born of travail, matures under constant testing, and once acknowledged, is subject to twisting.  That has certainly been the case with John Burr Williams’ theory.  What had angered his Harvard professors, at first, caused Wall Street brokers to scoff.  The majority of the wizards of Wall Street believed then, as they still do today, that earnings are the driver of stock prices and that dividends are only a by-product.  Furthermore, intrinsic value has never commanded a big following on Wall Street, where trading and short-term speculation have long been the accepted modus operandi. 

Blaming Wall Street 

A closer reading of the book, however, turned Wall Street’s ridicule to scorn.  The ways of Wall Street were being blamed, at least partly, for the stock market crash.  Williams' thesis stated the following: 

“The wide changes in stock prices during the last eight years, when prices fell by 80% to 90% from their 1929 peaks only to recover much of their decline later, are a serious indictment of past practices in Investment Analysis [Wall Street]. Had there been any general agreement among analysts themselves concerning the proper criteria of value, such enormous fluctuations should not have occurred, because the long-run prospects for dividends have not, in fact, changed as much as prices have. Prices have been based too much on current earning power, too little on long-run dividend-paying power. Is not one cause of the past volatility of stocks a lack of a sound Theory of Investment Value? Since this volatility of stocks helps in turn to make the business cycle itself more severe, may not advances in Investment Analysis prove a real help in reducing the damage done by the cycle?” 

Gradually, particularly among seasoned investment analysts and some academicians, Williams’ valuation theories gained credence. Arnold Bernhard, the founder of “The Value-Line Investment Survey,” perhaps the most famous of all independent, investment research firms, quoted Williams in his book, The Evaluation of Common Stocks, and echoed his concerns, 

“Williams postulates that the value of a stock is the sum of all its future dividends discounted by the present interest rates. . . . Because there is no generally accepted standard of value, the market prices of stocks fluctuate far more widely than their true values. The wide fluctuations have in the past imposed a heavy burden on the general economy and undermined the faith of many people in the free market economy. The need, therefore, exists for rational and disciplined standards of value that cannot lead to the wildness of 1929 or 1949 or the present." 

Myron Gordon in his 1959 book, Dividends, Earnings, and Stocks Prices, pays tribute to Mr. Williams for his pioneering work in discovering methods of calculating the intrinsic value using the dividend.  Mr. Gordon would later win a Nobel Prize for his expansion of John Burr Williams' ground breaking work.  There are many academics, as well as, investment professionals who believe that Mr. Williams' work also deserved a Nobel prize.

John Burr Williams is called the "father of dividend investing," but he was much more than that.  Williams recognized that the erratic behavior of stock prices was caused by a lack of connection to the true, fundamental value.  He was one of the first people to quantify the intrinsic value of a company.    

John Burr Williams' theories are the foundation upon which we have built our Rising Dividend Investing strategy.  Over the last 20 years of employing his ideas, we have seen time and again that prices for individual stocks and the market as a whole are often disconnected from what is later shown to be their true intrinsic value.  

Next time, we will discuss Williams' views on investing versus speculating.