Which one you think is better? Don't worry about title, subtitle, etc. just the layout, colors, etc.

So obviously, owning an "elite" business for years is a great idea for any investor at basically any level. And of course, you would like to invest when that business was fairly valued, if not undervalued. But for our discussion here, let’s exclude the value at which a business is priced. 1. What do you look for in an "elite" business? 2. What do you look for that indicates a business is becoming “elite”? 3. What are the indicators that a business is no longer “elite”?

So it would be interesting to hear from those who want to share what their biggest monetary mistake they have made. Here is mine. Sold one of my businesses in 1987 and had $220k cash in the corporation, some from retained earnings and some from the business sale, the balance of the sale in financed payment note. I was told I could not leave the money in the corp. as it would be considered a personal holding company against IRS rules! I used some of this cash to start another business. What I should have done is invested in the stock market is as we were at that moment at the bottom of the market downturn October 1987. Imagine what that value would be today if it was basically in a S&P 500 fund? One other thing. Since I had to remove the money from the corporation I had a tax bill that year of $52,000+.

Since many of us are value or dividend investors I'm curious what valuation metric you guys would use if you can only pick 1. Really tough to pick one because there are so many good metrics. If I was forced to pick one it would be FCF(free cash flow) like EV/FCF or FCF yield. I like the idea of having strong cash flows for businesses. If I wanted to target this metric I would use HERD or other Pacer ETFs to do it for me. I like to target value stocks as a whole and filtered with factors by Avantis but I did have HERD before for a global FCF fund of funds. I didn't pick P/B ratio because only targeting P/B leaves a lot of room for junk/value traps IMO. I also didn't pick the Piotroski F-Score because it's technically a bundle of value metrics.

What do you think about this for a title for my book? I'm going for attractive title, obviously, but I ultimately want to describe the book so it's not misleading. (i.e., people thinking it's a book about stock picking or something, when it's really not.) "Dividend Growth Machine: How to Generate Passive Income and Grow Wealth Safely" "Dividend Growth Machine: The Intelligent Investor’s Guide to Passive Income" "Dividend Growth Machine: How to Build a Lifetime of Growing Passive Income" "Dividend Growth Machine: How to Build a Worry-Free Retirement with Dividend Stocks" (current title) Or any other title ideas? I know not all have read it. It was previously "How to Supercharge Your Investment Returns in Dividend Stocks" but that was too much about stock picking.