Or it was always that way? It’s just I (dumb me) vastly underestimated some people’s stupidity. Or let’s blame the smartphones and the tech bros who helped this journey of “making us dumber” 🙂
Smartphone and Social Media
This is not a joke actually, because sometimes I joked too much and my kids usually think my “dad jokes” are not funny. Probably my wife doesn’t think highly some of my jokes either. There are research (google search) that says “social media” make people think less critically – if they were thinking critically before social media, I guess. Let me quite some results from Google search below.
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Search Labs | AI Overview Is social media making us stupid and less empathetic? – Peerbagh Yes, social media can make people less able to think critically and analytically, and it can also contribute to mental health issues.
Note with all the American exceptionalism (which in my mind, it’s a myth or overrated to say the least). I don’t think America is exceptional in terms of social media usage though – at the same time, the tech bros are raking in money from social media and overuse of big tech left and right:
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Zuckerberg’s FB/Instagram/Whatsapp;
Elon Musk’s X/Twitter (at least he hoped he could make more money from X, he did make tons of money from Tesla, with quite a bit government subsidies);
Jeff Bezos’ Amazon – earth’s biggest store, shop until you drop;
tech bros’ Google;
tech bros’ Apple;
and so on
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I do similar things on the Chinese social media platform WeChat and Red Note too 🙁 In other words, I believe overall we are all dumber because our eyes are glued to the phone or screen all the time (again if applicable, nothing personal).
Missouri aka the show money state
The outcome of recent lawsuit that awards Missouri $24 billion seems confirmed my worry. I was too simple, too naive. MO AG Andrew Bailey doesn’t seem to be a nice person, btw. As practical matters, this will just make the lives of Chinese people in Missouri a little bit harder. Because as a Chinese person who lived in the show money state since 1997, I know most people here cannot even tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese people and so on. I can’t either: when I met a Chinese couple back in January 2015 for my old daughter kindergarten registration, at first I thought they are Korean 🙂
I am expecting more “go back to your country” shenanigans 🙁
Tariff is another good example. It’s 100% shoot yourself on the foot – those who start the trade war. Here is a good example.
If a country wants to reduce trade deficit: the rational way is to reduce imports, or reduce consumption. Right: don’t buy the junks from Shein and Temu.
If a country wants to boost manufacturing sector, the country can do things such as educate young people on engineering and manufacturing, advocate and support manufacturing business (instead of doing the bitcoin and cryptos shit; or put 100% tariff on EVs from the country you don’t like), and soon. In either case though, tariffs for imports or subsidies for domestic manufacturing are interventions, in other words the Government is meddling in the market. What happens to the republicans free market narrative?
Reading Time: 5minutesStock chart for AT&T ends on 07/14/2023 – this actually the low point of stock for a while as you can see the new chart here
(Update 12-19-2024) I gave it more thought here at my Substack.
(Update 12-31-2023) I just looked at one of my IRA accounts in which I hold mostly stocks. The dividend yield is about 1% (I hold about 45% of the portfolio in $BRK). There are two points of the views on dividend based investing, some people argue we don’t always need the dividend. In the example of $BRK, basically we can trust the management, and we just need to sell the stocks to get the “dividend” for our spending need. Below is a YT video that explains this.
(Update 12-15-2023) Costco is issuing a special dividend of $15 per share, and this spurs some interest on some investors. Quote Motley Fool: “This will be Costco’s fifth-ever special dividend. Previous special dividends were paid in 2012, 2015, 2017, and 2020 in the amounts of $7, $5, $7, and $10, respectively. This makes the company’s 2024 special dividend of $15 its largest, by far.” I only have a few shares of $COST, btw. Below is a bigger $COST shareholder.
But I have more $KO, and I believe today 12-15-2023 is also the day Coca Cola pays out quarterly dividend: it’s 46 cents a share. Note $BRK has much more dividend income from $KO.
Other dividend stocks I have: $DVN and $PFE. Both declined significantly this year. I bought $DVN in the hope of getting the dividend yield, and it seems with the oil price slipping (in the near future), this didn’t work out for me yet. You may also notice $DVN’s dividend dropped compared to last year.
In the case of $PFE, the situation is much more dire: as shown in this Yahoo Finance Video.
Last but not least, Steve Baller, the former CEO of Microsoft, is getting lots of money from $MSFT dividend.
I have invested or to be more precise speculated in the US stock market since 2003, and this will mark the 20 year anniversary. In recent years, I gave more thoughts to the dividend, both because the dividends are becoming more meaningful, as well as I am thinking about potentially switch from a 9 to 5 job to multiple income streams, e.g., dividends, adjunct teaching at college, ads income from this blog (this seems to be hardest so far, btw :-), etc.
A few things to keep in mind when doing dividend-based or focused investing.
Make sure the company can afford or pay the dividend from its Free Cash Flow (FCF). If something is too good to be true, it’s likely not true. Case in point, if you look at AT&T stock now (07-21-2023), the dividend yield is 7.5%. The problem with AT&T and some other companies (e.g., $SCS, Steelcase the office furniture maker came to mind) is with the debt and deteriorating business or economy, they may not be able to pay the dividend continuously. I know one company that cut dividends recently: VF Corp ($VFC). More on AT&T, I had a tweet on its return in the last 29 years: I think I still need to calculate it myself. Not sure if the chart below includes all the cash dividends and the stock dividend (“Additionally, shareholders of AT&T received 0.241917 shares of WBD for each share of AT&T common stock they held at close”) $T #dividend.
I just noticed this Tweet (thread): S&P Dividend Aristocrats (Wikipedia; 5 year performance comparison with S&P 500, google finance, it seems they did NOT include the dividends in the calculation). I have $KO (#CocaCola) on this list. But Number 2 on the list Leggett & Platt, Incorporated (LEG) looked interesting to me. I just realized it’s based in Missouri (wiki), in fact, the town Carthage, Missouri is close to Joplin, MO, and it has two interstates passing the town: I-44 and I-49. Note their products are also interesting (e.g., this geosynthetic solution and their specialty products, as well as their history. They seem making components for office furniture too – reminds me of Steelcase and my recent purchase of an office chair. The family appears to no longer controls the company. Their current annual dividend is $1.84 (rate is %6.26 per Friday 7-21-2023 closing price of $29.38). I think I will do a deep dive into the company next. Btw, recently I realized this is a hard time for new graduates to get into the IT/software development field, I just noticed there is one position for this company (IT support, I know it’s not ideal, but still something to think about as an entry-level job).
I think I probably say a word about why invested in “stocks that issue cash dividend”. Besides the benefits of cash, a company that issues dividends regularly in some way shows two things: 1) Financial strength (again show me the free cash flow); 2) They care about the shareholder, in some cases the owners probably have a lot of shares too and they actually rely on the dividend for their lives. On the other hand, this does not mean the companies that doesn’t issue dividend are not good, in fact, Berkshire Hathaway the company famous investor Warren Buffett doesn’t issue regular dividend. I recall he said once they did issue 10 cents (source: “Other than a ten cent per share dividend that Berkshire paid in 1967, the company has never paid a dividend to shareholders since Warren Buffett took control in 1965.“) dividend, which looking back it was an expensive mistake. The reason being they invested in the money (say $1) instead of give it to shareholders right away, they get way more than $1 down the road.
PS: Leggett & Platt reminds me of another Missouri based company (Monett, Missouri), ironically it’s a banking ( technology company named Jack Henry & Associates (JKHY). They provide technology and service for financial services industry, with a focus on smaller banks or credit unions. It has an excellent return if we look from its IPO. It has a small dividend, and is in the S&P 500 index. Maybe someday I will drive around those two towns, and see if I can find special sauces that made them successful. Note the greater St. Lotus area has some S&P and Fortune 500 companies too: such as Emerson Electric (EMR) on this list (tweet). Btw, the all time return of JKHY (+47,569.44%, from 1985) is much better than EMR (+1,717.33%, from 1983). Not sure if Google finance has the complete set of historical data. Btw, Leggett & Platt (LEG) Inc performed similar to EMR in this period. I probably looked at JKHY about 15 years ago, not definitely not as serious as Warren Buffett. Warren probably reads the annual report for the company he is interested (plus the reports for 8 competitors).
Market sentiment week of 07-17
It can be better summarized by the unusual_whales tweet on the $ABNB share sales of its cofounder. While I am not saying the insiders always time the market, but it still reminds me of this: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sells more than $285 million in Microsoft stock. I recall about 6 month later (April 2022), $MSFT and Nasdaq had a peak / climax. Again I am not predicting the same this time around 🙂
