I like getting paid in cold, hard cash. And frankly, who doesn’t? But stock dividends are more than just a quarterly paycheck. They are a way of doing things. I would go so far as to argue that they are a philosophy of life (or at least of business). That might sound a little kooky...Read More

My financial practice is an interesting creation of the internet era. I don’t do a lot of face-to-face networking, and I very rarely host dinners or live events. It’s not that I’m against doing these things but rather than they are expensive and time consuming, and I’m not very good at them. If these things...Read More

I was digging through an old file cabinet that had belonged to my grandfather, and I found this little blast from the past: a Walmart (WMT) letter to shareholders from 1985, signed by Chairman and company founder Sam Walton. As a child in the 1980s, I actually remember my grandfather proudly showing me a paper...Read More

My favorite historical anecdote—and one that every investor should be forced to acknowledge reading before opening a brokerage account—dates to the era of the South Sea Bubble. A charlatan whose name is lost to history, published a prospectus for “A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it...Read More

Income investors had a little scare in May and June.  Bond prices took a tumble and dragged down assets that have come to be viewed as bond substitutes—including popular dividend-paying stocks, MLPs and REITs. Now that the dust has settled and the income markets have regained some semblance of normalcy, let’s take a step back...Read More