NEW YORK (MONEY Magazine) - The gospel of investing doesn't always prove true, as the preceding story shows. But since the 1960s, one tenet of faith has remained firm: The best way to build wealth is to buy and hold growth stocks -- staking your financial future on the shares of companies that increase their earnings by more than 12 percent year after year.

These glamour stocks rarely pay much in the way of dividends, on the theory that investors do better when profits are reinvested to fuel earnings growth.

Retirees who need cash to live on should own old-line blue chips that pay shareholders every three months, the gospel says. But to build wealth, you want growth.

Not anymore.

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