The Upcoming $16.50 Dividend To Kraft Shareholders
In 1988, the private equity firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts was on the prowl to take over a company after making hundreds of millions of post-tax dollars quickly from the leveraged buyout of Reynolds...
View ArticleEverything Not As It Seems
Every now and then, a reader will want to know what kind of formula can be easily plugged in to figure out what stocks to buy. I can think of useful approximations to get the process started. If a...
View ArticleThe Twin Pillar Stocks of Dividend Investing
Between 2011 and 2015, Procter & Gamble raised its dividend from $1.97 per share to $2.65 per share. During these four years, each share of P&G that got purchased at $60 in 2011 paid out...
View ArticleCharles Schwab’s Insurance Policy For Accounts Exceeding $500,000
In a sign of the times, a few readers have contacted me over the past months asking what you’re supposed to do when your brokerage account balance exceeds $500,000 and the amount of your account is no...
View ArticleMcDonald’s Stock: Your Best Bet For A Real Estate Investment
In Grinding It Out, the story of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc explained the financial engineering that drove the company to prosperity in its early days: “The formation of Franchise Realty Corporation, was to...
View ArticleMy Recommendation: Look To Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway is sitting on an overwhelming amount of cash. It overshadows just about every other company I study in terms of raw, untapped earnings power. As of last quarter, Warren Buffett had...
View ArticleSome Stocks Are Ticking Time Bombs
There is a reason why debt matters. There is a reason why you have to dig in and study balance sheets instead of making investment decisions based on what you see pop up in a stock screener. For...
View ArticleBlue-Chip Stocks With Low Dividend Yields
Hershey stock has come down 15% since the Christmastime period when I wrote about it being overvalued. The price currently sits at $93 per share (down from the January high of $111). I would classify...
View ArticleInvesting On The Eve Of Crisis
Lately, I’ve been doing some back-testing to try and find good answers to the following: (1) What if someone invested a lump sum in 2007 right before the financial crisis, and (2) what if that...
View ArticleThe S&P 500 Has Been Draining Investors Since 2005
When people buy shares in an Index Fund, they assume that they are buying shares in the largest companies available in the United States. You look at Apple, see its $700 billion market capitalization,...
View ArticleThe Kraft-Heinz Deal Through The Lens Of Anheuser Busch
From an owner’s perspective, the advantage of having 3G operate your business is that a higher percentage of revenues become net profits that can be paid out to shareholders as dividends free and...
View ArticleMy Big Investing Mistake of Omission
One of my favorite speeches of Charlie Munger, which Warren Buffett co-opted when he spoke at Florida University, was the story of how to turn $40 into $5 million. It was a story about Coca-Cola...
View ArticleRoyal Dutch Shell For IRA Income Investors
It is historically unusual for Royal Dutch Shell to yield over 6%. This is a company with a very long history of having a fair value that also corresponds to a dividend yield between 5% and 6%. Given...
View ArticleAn Introduction To Canadian Dividend Investors
Somehow, this site developed a strong Canadian audience. There are as many Canadian readers here as readers from the state of Georgia, which is a little perplexing to me because I can at least...
View ArticleWhy Visa Stock Rises Faster Than American Express
Visa and Mastercard are distinctly different from other credit card companies like American Express and Discover Card. When you swipe something on your Visa or Mastercard, you are not actually using...
View ArticleBefore You Write Wal-Mart Stock’s Obituary
In the 1990s, no stock contributed more to the earnings per share growth rate of the S&P 500 than Wal-Mart stock. It had been an elevator upward delivering 16% annual earnings per share growth...
View ArticleCharlie Munger’s Mental Models Out In The Wild
Right now, the Tampa Bay Lightning are playing the Chicago Blackhawks in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs on NBC. In the lead up to the game, however, the conversation has not been about Tampa Bay’s...
View ArticleThe Catch-22 Of Investing
I’ve been digging through the financial commentary archives of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times to compare the tone of investment commentary in the late 1990s to the financial news in...
View ArticleWhy Visa Stock Rises Faster Than American Express
Visa and Mastercard are distinctly different from other credit card companies like American Express and Discover Card. When you swipe something on your Visa or Mastercard, you are not actually using...
View ArticleFinding the Hot Spots of American Business
The general theme of my investing articles has been this: Buy healthcare. Buy energy. Buy consumer staples. There may also be a place for tobacco, telecommunications, and utilities depending on your...
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