Geraldine Weiss, who, after being told by a succession of stockbrokers that she was best qualified for the secretarial pool, devised an unconventional moneymaking strategy that she used in becoming the first woman to launch a successful investment newsletter, died on April 25 at her home in the La Jolla area of San Diego. She was 96.

For more than a decade, Ms. Weiss wrote, edited and published her stock market newsletter, Investment Quality Trends, as G. Weiss to conceal her identity as a woman. It wasn’t until 1977 that she disclosed her full identity in an appearance on the PBS show “Wall Street Week With Louis Rukeyser.”

Ms. Weiss grounded her twice-a-month advisories in company dividends instead of the intense analysis of corporate earnings, which has long been the dominant focus of Wall Street. She argued that dividends were the best gauge of performance, because they represented here-and-now cash not subject to subterfuge. She explained that earnings can be “hidden or disguised behind vague bookkeeping terms such as cash flow, depreciation or inventory reserves and distorted by taxes.” She became known as the grand dame of dividends.