Are there any Dogs of the Dow fans out there? I admit, there was a time when I pursued this strategy. I'm no longer a follower because my investors intuition told me a formula so simple simply couldn't be successful over a long period of time.

For anyone not familiar with the Dogs of the Dow investment concept, it's a simple investment strategy based on the theory that large companies at or near the bottom of their business cycles will usually outperform as they regress to their mean returns.

The Dogs of the Dow strategy holds that large companies at the bottom of their business cycles can be identified by their high dividend yields. See, large companies almost never cut dividends, so when their stock prices are down compared to their dividends, the dividend yields are high.

The Dogs of the Dow strategy seems pretty clever, in that it directs you to buy stocks in large, presumable stable companies while their stock prices are low. While you're waiting for their stock prices to appreciate you get a nice stream of dividends.

The strategy calls for investors to buy the ten highest yielding Dow stocks at some arbitrary point in time and hold them for a year.

So, how are this year's ten Dogs of the Dow performing? Not so well, as it turns out.

Fully seven of the ten Dow Dogs are in the lower half of the Dow 30's year to date performance range. Half of the Dow's Dogs are in negative territory for the year so far. Now, to be fair, I have not factored the dividends these stocks pay into the overall return. Doing that would cause all of the stocks in the Dow 30 to look a little better in terms of YTD performance; and the Dogs of the Dow would drift a little bit more in the upward direction than the lower yielding stocks. Still, the overall results wouldn't change by much.

Like most other pat investment strategies, the Dogs of the Dow strategy does have it's flaws. It takes a little more thought and a little more hard work than this to beat the market. Still, I think if I were looking for a stock picking system today, I'd opt for this one over a black box. To me, knowing why I'm buying something is job one.