Laser-focused on dividends: ten companies that raised dividends this past week (remember, we're in a recession):
- CVX, KMB, NSC, CMCSA, ADM, HAL, MRO, NUE, BLK, HCA, SPGI, SCHW.
- Barron's has a negative article on railroads;
- CMCSA headlines were bad when earnings reported;
- CVX: well, what can I say?
Investing: in 50 years of investing (rare, occasional, short-term exceptions), two sectors in which I never invested: airlines and refiners. That changed this past year.
Transition: it appears some investors were unaware of the post-Covid global re-opening. I was not unaware, but I did not anticipate some of the major changes. McKinsey, et al, should have been incredibly busy the past twelve months, but my hunch: probably not.
The nice thing about investing: if a particular equity concerns you, there are 15,000 others among which to choose.
Natural gas:
Fed policy: signs it may be working (https://twitter.com/barronsonline/status/1619162528772235265).
US debt:
- link here; as a percent of tax receipts —
- US interest payments so we could have nice things / tax receipts: 2.5% (needs to be fact-checked)
- amount to spend to have a nice house 28% of income
- link here, fact checking: looks like I'm correct;
- pet peeve: when folks don't provide denominators, and/or don't put things in historical perspective; and, myths about global warming -- but that's about it -- that's about the only pet peeves I have.
- oh, one other pet peeve: hand-wringing over money spent by government during Covid-19 lock downs
- and one more: PSA (police standing around).
