Dividend Futures Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Dividend Futures. Here they are! All 56 of them:

I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. ... [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,' [or] 'I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.' Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.
Jeff Bezos
Performance of management should be measured by potential to stay in business, to protect investment, to ensure future dividends and jobs through improvement of product and service for the future, not by the quarterly dividend.
W. Edwards Deming (The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality)
Whatever the reason we first mustered the _Apollo_ program, however mired it was in Cold War nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of the Earth is its clear and luminous dividend, the unexpected final gift of _Apollo_. What began in deadly competition has helped us to see that global cooperation is the essential precondition for our survival. Travel is broadening. It's time to hit the road again.
Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
If there’s one place, then, where we can intervene in a way that will pay dividends for society down the road, it’s in the classroom. Yet that’s barely happening. All the big debates in education are about format. About delivery. About didactics. Education is consistently presented as a means of adaptation – as a lubricant to help you glide more effortlessly through life. On the education conference circuit, an endless parade of trend watchers prophesy about the future and essential twenty-first-century skills, the buzzwords being “creative,” “adaptable,” and “flexible.” The focus, invariably, is on competencies, not values. On didactics, not ideals. On “problem-solving ability,” but not which problems need solving. Invariably, it all revolves around the question: Which knowledge and skills do today’s students need to get hired in tomorrow’s job market – the market of 2030? Which is precisely the wrong question. In 2030, there will likely be a high demand for savvy accountants untroubled by a conscience. If current trends hold, countries like Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland will become even bigger tax havens, enabling multinationals to dodge taxes even more effectively, leaving developing countries with an even shorter end of the stick. If the aim of education is to roll with these kinds of trends rather than upend them, then egotism is set to be the quintessential twenty-first-century skill. Not
Rutger Bregman (Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There)
You can’t always choose your future. Not in a world of risk and uncertainty. No matter what the self-help gurus tell you. You can only attempt to guide it in the right direction, like a willful horse, but accept there will be times when it will gallop off in a direction not of your choosing. No one can tell you what lies ahead with one hundred percent accuracy. If your doctor tells you ninety-nine out of one hundred people die of your disease, you most likely will die, but you might also be the one who beats the odds, and if you do, you will believe yourself special and blessed, and your loved ones will believe the fervency of their prayers for you paid dividends, but it’s just math. It’s all just math.
Liane Moriarty (Here One Moment)
A thorough and accurate diagnosis, while more time-consuming, will pay huge dividends in the future.
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
Because I actually landed a gig for my junior year that had the potential to pay huge dividends in my future.
Lynn Painter (Nothing Like the Movies (Better Than the Movies, #2))
Do not trust historical data—especially recent data—to estimate the future returns of stocks and bonds. Instead, rely on interest and dividend payouts and their growth/failure rates.
William J. Bernstein (The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between)
The tendency is here, born of slavery and quickened to renewed life by the crazy imperialism of the day, to regard human beings as among the material resources of a land to be trained with an eye single to future dividends.
W.E.B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk)
God is your boss. He is your power, he is your promotion, and he determines your future. It's not you, or your boss that makes the decisions about your life, it's God! So if your circumstances are a warning that you should slow down, then you should listen up, take note, and start working in God's timing. Don't fight God's timing, because you can never win. Just a gentle submission to the will and purpose of God to move more slowly, will pay dividends, and help you from making too many mistakes.
Christopher Roberts (365 Days With God: A Daily Devotional)
And yet still they burned carbon. They drove cars, ate meat, flew in jets, did all the things that had caused the heat wave and would cause the next one. Profits still were added up in a way that led to shareholder dividends. And so on. Everyone alive knew that not enough was being done, and everyone kept doing too little.
Kim Stanley Robinson (The Ministry for the Future)
In forests – Seeds are planted in the soil (capital) and become trees that shed leaves as they grow. Those shedded leaves become added capital to the soil (dividends/yields). The tree also provides a home for other life forms which return capital to the soil. Upon the death of the tree, it’s entire body becomes capital as it is returned to the soil. In this cycle, every tree is an investment which results in the long term accumulation of soil (capital) over time. As the soil grows, it becomes better able to invest in future trees and host future forests. And the yield of them all collectively becomes greater and greater as the capital accumulates. In fact, everything in a natural ecosystem both is capital and exists in service to capital. This duality of capital in natural ecosystems is why capital in natural ecosystems is able to compound and multiply so well. So when it comes to investing - managing portfolios, we apply this duality of capital perspective and pair it with our stewardship identity, which allows us to grow portfolios and maximize wealth.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Investing, The Permaculture Way: Mayflower-Plymouth's 12 Principles of Permaculture Investing)
Yet after all they are but gates, and when turning our eyes from the temporary and the contingent in the Negro problem to the broader question of the permanent uplifting and civilization of black men in America, we have a right to inquire, as this enthusiasm for material advancement mounts to its height, if after all the industrial school is the final and sufficient answer in the training of the Negro race; and to ask gently, but in all sincerity, the ever-recurring query of the ages, Is not life more than meat, and the body more than raiment? And men ask this to-day all the more eagerly because of sinister signs in recent educational movements. The tendency is here, born of slavery and quickened to renewed life by the crazy imperialism of the day, to regard human beings as among the material resources of a land to be trained with an eye single to future dividends. Race-prejudices, which keep brown and black men in their “places,” we are coming to regard as useful allies with such a theory, no matter how much they may dull the ambition and sicken the hearts of struggling
W.E.B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk)
The importance of ethical governance, exemplified by the Norwegian Pension Fund, is highlighted by a deplorable UK government proposal in 2016 to set up a Shale Wealth Fund.38 The fund would receive up to 10 per cent of the revenue generated by fracking (hydraulic fracturing) for shale gas, which could amount to as much as £1 billion over twenty-five years. This would be paid out to communities hosting fracking sites, which could decide to use the money for local projects or distribute it to households in cash. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is a bribe to secure local approval of environmentally threatening fracking operations, to which there has been considerable public opposition. Beyond that, there are many equity questions. Why should only people who happen to live in areas with shale gas be beneficiaries? How would the recipient community be defined? Would the payments go only to those living in the designated community at the time the fracking started? Would they be paid as lump sums or on a regular basis, and how long would they last? What about future generations? Can cash payments compensate for the risk of harm to the air, water, landscape and livelihoods? All these questions cast doubt on the equity and ethics of any selective scheme. They underline the need for the principles of wealth funds and dividends from them to be established before they are implemented, and for a governance structure that is independent from government and business. But
Guy Standing (Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen)
My heart yields dividends unseen; thou art my soul's annuity.
Catherynne M. Valente (The Future Is Blue)
This situation increased production and decreased overall costs, a sort of “demographic dividend”. But within the next year or so, this will end. The working-age population will start to decline for the first time. And the numbers of those over 60-65 will grow. In an interesting coincidence, the China Pavilion built for the 2010 Shanghai Expo bears a striking similarity to China’s demographic future.
Jeffrey Towson (The One Hour China Consumer Book: Five Short Stories That Explain the Brutal Fight for One Billion Consumers)
Simply switching to home-brewed coffee will save you an average of $64.48 per month (or $2 per day) or $773.80 per year. By putting the savings into a mutual fund with average earnings of 6.5% interest and reinvesting the dividends into more mutual funds over a decade, the $64.48 saved every month would grow into $10,981.93.
Benjamin P. Hardy (How to Consciously Design Your Ideal Future)
To fill this gap in the capital market, Davis and Rock set themselves up as a limited partnership, the same legal structure that had been used by a short-lived rival called Draper, Gaither & Anderson.[18] Rather than identifying startups and then seeking out corporate investors, they began by raising a fund that would render corporate investors unnecessary. As the two active, or “general,” partners, Davis and Rock each seeded the fund with $100,000 of their own capital. Then, ignoring the easy loans to be had from the fashionable SBIC structure, they raised just under $3.2 million from some thirty “limited” partners—rich individuals who served as passive investors.[19] The beauty of this size and structure was that the Davis & Rock partnership now had a war chest seven and a half times larger than an SBIC, and with it the ammunition to supply companies with enough capital to grow aggressively. At the same time, by keeping the number of passive investors under the legal threshold of one hundred, the partnership flew under the regulatory radar, avoiding the restrictions that ensnared the SBICs and Doriot’s ARD.[20] Sidestepping yet another weakness to be found in their competitors, Davis and Rock promised at the outset to liquidate their fund after seven years. The general partners had their own money in the fund, and thus a healthy incentive to invest with caution. At the same time, they could deploy the outside partners’ capital for a limited time only. Their caution would be balanced with deliberate aggression. Indeed, everything about the fund’s design was calculated to support an intelligent but forceful growth mentality. Unlike the SBICs, Davis & Rock raised money purely in the form of equity, not debt. The equity providers—that is, the outside limited partners—knew not to expect dividends, so Davis and Rock were free to invest in ambitious startups that used every dollar of capital to expand their business.[21] As general partners, Davis and Rock were personally incentivized to prioritize expansion: they took their compensation in the form of a 20 percent share of the fund’s capital appreciation. Meanwhile, Rock was at pains to extend this equity mentality to the employees of his portfolio companies. Having witnessed the effect of employee share ownership on the early culture of Fairchild, he believed in awarding managers, scientists, and salesmen with stock and stock options. In sum, everybody in the Davis & Rock orbit—the limited partners, the general partners, the entrepreneurs, their key employees—was compensated in the form of equity.
Sebastian Mallaby (The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future)
Small changes in how much you notice the luck that you would otherwise overlook will have a big influence on the way your life turns out. Those small changes act like compounding interest that pays big dividends on your future decision-making.
Annie Duke (How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices)
The dividend discount model suggests that in an efficient market, the current price of a stock should equal the present value of all expected future dividends, assuming for the sake of simplicity that the investor has no intention of selling the stock. (The present value is sometimes called the discounted value, since the present value of an item is discounted from its value in the future.)
Andrew W. Lo (In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio: The Stories, Voices, and Key Insights of the Pioneers Who Shaped the Way We Invest)
But as we pointed out in Chapter Two, it doesn’t make sense to wait until your children’s brains have fully matured before entrusting them with decisions, or you would be waiting until their late twenties or early thirties. The brain develops according to how it’s used. This means that by encouraging our kids—and requiring our adolescents—to make their own decisions, we are giving them invaluable experience in assessing their own needs honestly, paying attention to their feelings and motivations, weighing pros and cons, and trying to make the best possible decision for themselves. We help them develop a brain that’s used to making hard choices and owning them. This is huge and will pay big future dividends.
William Stixrud (The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives)
These steps will help you remember that correlation is not causation, and that most market prophecies are based on coincidental patterns. That was the problem in the late 1990s at the Motley Fool website. Its Foolish Four portfolios were based on research claiming that factors like the ratio of a company’s dividend yield to the square root of its stock price could predict future outperformance. In the long run, however, a company’s stock can rise only if its underlying business earns more money.
Jason Zweig (Your Money and Your Brain)
Buffett’s 1952 memo on Cleveland Worsted Mills mentioned that the stock traded below net current asset value and had “several well-equipped mills.”98 He thought the company had ample earnings to cover the dividend, a view supported by the summary financials found in Table 1. The company paid $8.00 a share out to shareholders, and the last year the company earned below this figure was 1945.99 The income and return on capital figures were a little concerning. Like Marshall-Wells in the first chapter, Cleveland Worsted Mills was coming off the post-World War II highs and falling back to earth, earning a respectable but not extraordinary return on invested capital in 1951. Worsted was a commodity product, with shortages the sole reason for the company’s previously rising income and returns on capital. As the market normalized, the company was unlikely to earn above-average returns on capital in the future.
Brett Gardner (Buffett's Early Investments: A new investigation into the decades when Warren Buffett earned his best returns)
The indefiniteness of finance can be bizarre. Think about what happens when successful entrepreneurs sell their company. What do they do with the money? In a financialized world, it unfolds like this: • The founders don’t know what to do with it, so they give it to a large bank. • The bankers don’t know what to do with it, so they diversify by spreading it across a portfolio of institutional investors. • Institutional investors don’t know what to do with their managed capital, so they diversify by amassing a portfolio of stocks. • Companies try to increase their share price by generating free cash flows. If they do, they issue dividends or buy back shares and the cycle repeats. At no point does anyone in the chain know what to do with money in the real economy. But in an indefinite world, people actually prefer unlimited optionality; money is more valuable than anything you could possibly do with it. Only in a definite future is money a means to an end, not the end itself.
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
Ideally, a fine painting, like a house, is neither a speculation nor an investment; it is a purchase. Its value consists solely of the pleasure and utility it provides now and in the future. The dividend the painting provides is of the non-financial variety. How,
William J. Bernstein (The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio)
Countries competing against one another in the same array of products and services is not covered by Ricardian trade theory.   Offshoring doesn’t fit the Ricardian or the competitive idea of free trade. In fact, offshoring is not trade.   Offshoring is the practice of a firm relocating its production of goods or services for its home market to a foreign country. When an American firm moves production offshore, US GDP declines by the amount of the offshored production, and foreign GDP increases by that amount. Employment and consumer income decline in the US and rise abroad. The US tax base shrinks, resulting in reductions in public services or in higher taxes or a switch from tax finance to bond finance and higher debt service cost.   When the offshored production comes back to the US to be marketed, the US trade deficit increases dollar for dollar. The trade deficit is financed by turning over to foreigners US assets and their future income streams. Profits, dividends, interest, capital gains, rents, and tolls from leased toll roads now flow from American pockets to foreign pockets, thus worsening the current account deficit as well.   Who benefits from these income losses suffered by Americans? Clearly, the beneficiary is the foreign country to which the production is moved. The other prominent beneficiaries are the shareholders and the executives of the companies that offshore production. The lower labor costs raise profits, the share price, and the “performance bonuses” of corporate management.   Offshoring’s proponents claim that the lost incomes from job losses are offset by benefits to consumers from lower prices. Allegedly, the harm done to those who lose their jobs is more than offset by the benefit consumers in general get from the alleged lower prices. Yet, proponents are unable to cite studies that support this claim. The claim is based on the unexamined assumption that offshoring is free trade and, thereby, mutually beneficial.   Proponents of jobs offshoring also claim that the Americans who are left unemployed soon find equal or better jobs. This claim is based on the assumption that the demand for labor ensures full employment, and that people whose jobs have been moved abroad can be retrained for new jobs that are equal to or better than the jobs that were lost.   This claim is false.
Paul Craig Roberts (The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West)
The 9/11 Commission warned that Al Qaeda "could... scheme to wield weapons of unprecedented destructive power in the largest cities of the United States." Future attacks could impose enormous costs on the entire economy. Having used up the surplus that the country enjoyed as part of the Cold War peace dividend, the U.S. government is in a weakened financial position to respond to another major terrorist attack, and its position will be damaged further by the large budget gaps and growing dependence on foreign capital projected for the future. As the historian Paul Kennedy wrote in his book The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, too many decisions made in Washington today "bring merely short-term advantage but long-term disadvantage." The absence of a sound, long-term financial strategy could bring about a deterioration that, in his words, "leads to the downward spiral of slower growth, heavier taxes, deepening domestic splits over spending priorities and a weakening capacity to bear the burdens of defense." Decades of success in mobilizing enormous sums of money to fight large wars and meet other government needs have led Americans to believe that ample funds will be readily available in the event of a future war, terrorist attack, or other emergency. But that can no longer be assumed. Budget constraints could limit the availability or raise the cost of resources to deal with new emergencies. If government debt continues to pile up, deficits rise to stratospheric levels, and heave dependence on foreign capital grows, borrowing the money needed will be very costly. [Alexander] Hamilton understood the risks of such a precarious situation. After suffering through financial shortages, lack of adequate food and weapons, desertions, and collapsing morale during the Revolution, he considered the risk that the government would have difficulty in assembling funds to defend itself all too real. If America remains on its dangerous financial course, Hamilton's gift to the nation - the blessing of sound finances - will be squandered. The U.S. government had no higher obligation that to protect the security of its citizens. Doing so becomes increasingly difficult if its finances are unsound. While the nature of this new brand of warfare, the war on terrorism, remains uncharted, there is much to be gained if our leaders look to the experiences of the past for guidance in responding to the challenges of the future. The willingness of the American people and their leaders to ensure that the nation's finances remain sound in the face of these new challenges - sacrificing parochial interests for the common good - is the price we must pay to preserve the nation's security and thus the liberties that Hamilton and his generation bequeathed us.
Robert D. Hormats
The value of a company can be derived from adding the value of all future dividends written down to net present value. Therefore, a reasoned view of the future is essential.
Stephen Asbury (Health & Safety, Environment and Quality Audits)
GODMAN QUOTES 10 ***Words to remember *** What is not as long as a Key will not be long enough for a Padlock. Determination unlocks achievement. Trace all flow to a source, all bitters, tastes from origin. What is done in harmony doesn’t bear clusters. The sweetest water is tasteless in a sip. Beware… the area of time is not in measurable dimension. Whatever that didn’t allow you to work will never grant you the mercy for a pay…it’s a dividend of duty and time. A daint on your knee is not by kneeling, but an observation we got when we are faint begging our fate to the floor. We beat live where it stops others we challenge destinies where it dumps lives. Judge him not by his yesterday that was him testing the future.
Godman Tochukwu Sabastine
Somewhere at the head of the great dividend-paying machine that was called the General Fuel Company must be some devilish intelligence that had worked it all out, that had given the orders to its ecclesiastical staff: “We want the present—we leave you the future! We want the bodies—we leave you the souls! Teach them what you will about heaven—so long as you let us plunder them on earth!
Upton Sinclair (King Coal: A Novel)
Maybe she was having a bad day,” Lexi said as she unwrapped the chocolate bar the saleswoman had given her. “And yeah, I could have been mean, but now maybe she’ll remember that the person she judged was actually fun and really nice, and she will be more open-minded in the future. Kindness pays dividends.
Alina Jacobs (The Art of Awkward Affection (The Richmond Brothers #1))
If you want to put money in investment funds, buy a group of closed-end shares at a discount of, say, 10% to 15% from asset value, instead of paying a premium of about 9% above asset value for shares of an open-end company. Assuming that the future dividends and changes in asset values continue to be about the same for the two groups, you will thus obtain about one-fifth more for your money from the closed-end shares.
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
Networking is a deposit in the bank of your future and in your startup. It won’t happen immediately, but if you do it right, you will continue to receive its dividends for years. I, for one, can network with the best of them! You can too.
Charlene Walters (Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur: 10 Mindset Shifts for Women to Take Action, Unleash Creativity, and Achieve Financial Success)
The first, or predictive, approach could also be called the qualitative approach, since it emphasizes prospects, management, and other nonmeasurable, albeit highly important, factors that go under the heading of quality. The second, or protective, approach may be called the quantitative or statistical approach, since it emphasizes the measurable relationships between selling price and earnings, assets, dividends, and so forth. Incidentally, the quantitative method is really an extension—into the field of common stocks—of the viewpoint that security analysis has found to be sound in the selection of bonds and preferred stocks for investment. In our own attitude and professional work we were always committed to the quantitative approach. From the first we wanted to make sure that we were getting ample value for our money in concrete, demonstrable terms. We were not willing to accept the prospects and promises of the future as compensation
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
Despite its imperial roots, the current war is being waged in a new international environment defined by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the disintegration of the post–Cold War international order, and an unprecedented resurgence of populist nationalism, last seen in the 1930s, throughout the world. The war clearly indicates that Europe and the world have all but spent the peace dividend resulting from the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and are entering a new, as yet undetermined, era. A new world order, possibly replicating the bipolar world of the Cold War era, is being forged in the flames of the current war. At the time of writing that war is not over, and we do not yet know what its end will bring. But it is quite clear even today that the future of the world in which we and our children and grandchildren will be living depends greatly on its outcome.
Serhii Plokhy (The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History)
Many times, organizations are unclear about what decisions they need to make or what they need to learn. Investing time upfront in clarifying a focal issue will pay dividends in keeping the activity focused and relevant.
Andy Hines (Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight)
In his book 30 Lessons for Living, gerontologist Karl Pillemer interviewed a thousand elderly Americans looking for the most important lessons they learned from decades of life experience. He wrote: No one—not a single person out of a thousand—said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you want. No one—not a single person—said it’s important to be at least as wealthy as the people around you, and if you have more than they do it’s real success. No one—not a single person—said you should choose your work based on your desired future earning power. What they did value were things like quality friendships, being part of something bigger than themselves, and spending quality, unstructured time with their children. “Your kids don’t want your money (or what your money buys) anywhere near as much as they want you. Specifically, they want you with them,” Pillemer writes. Take it from those who have lived through everything: Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.
Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money)
If a connoisseur of the irony of political life is struck solemn by it, if he talks of tragic irony, then he is a ‘wet’ Machiavellian, a Christian. If he is fascinated by it, intellectually interested, he is a central Machiavellian, like the master himself. If he is amused by the irony of political life, he is an extreme Machiavellian, a cynic, a man who enjoys the sufferings and embarrassments of others. Just as Machiavellians do not understand the nature of tragedy, so Grotians are unable to understand the structure or texture of irony, which has several strands. The first is that of mere accident. Thus Cesare Borgia made many precautions against Alexander VI's death… Machiavelli recalls: ‘On the day that Julius II was elected, he told me that he had thought of everything that might occur at the death of his father, and had provided a remedy for all, except that he had never foreseen that, when the death did happen, he himself would be on the point to die... Another strand of historical irony is multiple or cumulative causation of a single result. Thus there were many mistakes in Louis XII's policy in Italy: he destroyed the small powers; aggrandized a greater power, the papacy; and called in a foreign power, Spain. He did not settle in Italy, nor send colonies to Italy, and he weakened the Venetians... A third strand is the single causation of opposite results, or paradox. Marxists like this notion: the bourgeoisie created simultaneously a single world economy and the extreme of international anarchy… A fourth strand of irony is self-frustration, or failure. Men intend one result and produce another... Japan, too, by attempting to conquer China, did much to make China instead of herself the future Great Power of the Orient... A fifth strand in historical irony is that the same policy, in different circumstances, will produce different effects... The sixth and last strand is that contrary policies, in different circumstances, can produce the same effects. This is discussed in an unintentionally amusing way in The Discourses (bk III), when Machiavelli discusses whether harsh methods or mild are the more efficacious. He lists examples where humanity, kindness, common decency, and generosity paid political dividends, including Fabricius' rejection of the offer to poison Pyrrhus. But Hannibal obtained fame and victory by exactly opposite methods: cruelty, violence, rapine, and perfidy.
Martin Wight (Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant, and Mazzini)
Developing sound policies requires seeing natural resources as dividends of sustained ecosystem productivity rather than as a stockpile of assets.
Daniel C. Esty (A Better Planet: Forty Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future)
According to dividend irrelevance theory, the only consideration that affects a company’s valuation is its earnings, which are a direct result of the company’s investment policy and the future prospects.
Timothy J. McIntosh (The Snowball Effect: Using Dividend & Interest Reinvestment To Help You Retire On Time)
We define a bargain issue as one which, on the basis of facts established by analysis, appears to be worth considerably more than it is selling for. The genus includes bonds and preferred stocks selling well under par, as well as common stocks. To be as concrete as possible, let us suggest that an issue is not a true “bargain” unless the indicated value is at least 50% more than the price. What kind of facts would warrant the conclusion that so great a discrepancy exists? How do bargains come into existence, and how does the investor profit from them? There are two tests by which a bargain common stock is detected. The first is by the method of appraisal. This relies largely on estimating future earnings and then multiplying these by a factor appropriate to the particular issue. If the resultant value is sufficiently above the market price—and if the investor has confidence in the technique employed—he can tag the stock as a bargain. The second test is the value of the business to a private owner. This value also is often determined chiefly by expected future earnings—in which case the result may be identical with the first. But in the second test more attention is likely to be paid to the realizable value of the assets, with particular emphasis on the net current assets or working capital. At low points in the general market a large proportion of common stocks are bargain issues, as measured by these standards. (A typical example was General Motors when it sold at less than 30 in 1941, equivalent to only 5 for the 1971 shares. It had been earning in excess of $4 and paying $3.50, or more, in dividends.) It is true that current earnings and the immediate prospects may both be poor, but a levelheaded appraisal of average future conditions would indicate values far above ruling prices. Thus the wisdom of having courage in depressed markets is vindicated not only by the voice of experience but also by application of plausible techniques of value analysis.
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
Which factors determine how much you should be willing to pay for a stock? What makes one company worth 10 times earnings and another worth 20 times? How can you be reasonably sure that you are not overpaying for an apparently rosy future that turns out to be a murky nightmare? Graham feels that five elements are decisive.1 He summarizes them as: the company’s “general long-term prospects” the quality of its management its financial strength and capital structure its dividend record and its current dividend rate.
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
The fundamentals of the economy remain strong.' That cliche is repeated by authorities as they try to restore public confidence after every major stock market decline. They have the opportunity to say this because just about every major stock market decline appears inexplicable if one looks only at the factors that logically ought to influence stock markets. It is practically always the stock market that has changed; indeed the fundamentals haven't. How do we know that these changes could not be generated by fundamentals? If prices reflect fundamentals, they do so because those fundamentals are useful in forecasting future stock payoffs. In theory the stock prices are the predictors of the discounted value of those future income streams, in the form of future dividends or future earnings. But stock prices are much too variable. They are even much more variable than those discounted streams of dividends (or earnings) that they are trying to predict.
George A. Akerlof (Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism)
Nokia sat on top of one of the biggest growth markets the world had ever seen, and on top of one of the biggest piles of cash in history. But instead of thinking like an insurgent and investing in the future, it gave out 40 percent dividends and used its cash to buy back large quantities of its own stock. Within just a few years, Apple, Samsung, and soon Google had seized the smartphone market, and Nokia, once a model of innovation and insurgent-style thinking, was in steep decline. A board member, when interviewed about what happened, pointed to internal factors, not competitive moves, and concluded simply, “We were too slow to act.”6
Chris Zook (The Founder's Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth)
Instead, let’s tune out the noise and think about future returns as Graham might. The stock market’s performance depends on three factors: real growth (the rise of companies’ earnings and dividends) inflationary growth (the general rise of prices throughout the economy) speculative growth—or decline (any increase or decrease in the investing public’s appetite for stocks)
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
If you want to own individual stocks your portfolio should have a minimum of 10 to 12 stocks. It is never smart to have a larger portion of your retirement funds invested in one stock. No matter how stable that stock looks, we can never be sure of its future. If the money you want to devote to stocks is not enough to buy that many individual shares, then I recommend you focus on dividend-paying ETFs.
Suze Orman (The Money Class: Learn to Create Your New American Dream)
Questions to ask when analyzing a business Business - How does the company make money? - Does it seem like it should be a good business? Is it competitive? Do suppliers have too much power? Do customers value the product? Are there substitutes? - Without looking at financials, how does the company seem like it has done against competitors in its industry in terms of executing on its vision? - What reputation does the management team have? Do they seem honest? Straightforward? Valuation - What is the company's P/E multiple? Is it high or low for its industry? For the overall market right now? Why might the stock be trading at this valuation? - What is the company's free-cash flow yield? Is this a relevant metric given the stage the company is in? How does it compare to similar companies? - Is the company growing faster or more slowly than other companies with similar multiples? - Based on the number alone, does the company seem to have a rich valuation or a cheap valuation? Why might this be the case? Financials - What has been the trajectory of revenue growth over the past ten years? Why? What is it expected to do in the future? - How has the company's industry been growing? Is the company gaining or losing share in its industry? - What is the company’s level of profit margins? How does it compare to other companies in its industry? - How have margins varied over the past ten years? Why? - What percentage  of the company's costs are fixed costs versus variable costs? - What is the company's historical return on capital? Why is it high/low? What does this say about the quality of the business? - What is the trend in returns on capital? Why? What does this say about the returns the company will have to make on its future investments? - What is the company's dividend policy? Why? If they are paying no dividend or a small dividend, is there a danger that the company's management will waste shareholder's money? Technical - How have the company's shares performed against the overall market and its industry over the past twelve months? - What seems to be driving this under/over performance? - What key news events are likely to impact the stock in the future? - Do mutual funds and other large institutional investors seem to be buying or selling the shares? Sentiment and Expectations - What are the consensus earnings estimates for the next quarter and year? Do they seem aggressive or conservative? - Does consensus opinion seem overly bullish or bearish about the company's future prospects? - What insight do you have that the market might be missing that will cause the shares to appreciate?
Ex (Simple Stock Trading Formulas: How to Make Money Trading Stocks)
The Bayesian Invisible Hand … free-market capitalism and Bayes’ theorem come out of something of the same intellectual tradition. Adam Smith and Thomas Bayes were contemporaries, and both were educated in Scotland and were heavily influenced by the philosopher David Hume. Smith’s 'Invisible hand' might be thought of as a Bayesian process, in which prices are gradually updated in response to changes in supply and demand, eventually reaching some equilibrium. Or, Bayesian reasoning might be thought of as an 'invisible hand' wherein we gradually update and improve our beliefs as we debate our ideas, sometimes placing bets on them when we can’t agree. Both are consensus-seeking processes that take advantage of the wisdom of crowds. It might follow, then, that markets are an especially good way to make predictions. That’s really what the stock market is: a series of predictions about the future earnings and dividends of a company. My view is that this notion is 'mostly' right 'most' of the time. I advocate the use of betting markets for forecasting economic variables like GDP, for instance. One might expect these markets to improve predictions for the simple reason that they force us to put our money where our mouth is, and create an incentive for our forecasts to be accurate. Another viewpoint, the efficient-market hypothesis, makes this point much more forcefully: it holds that it is 'impossible' under certain conditions to outpredict markets. This view, which was the orthodoxy in economics departments for several decades, has become unpopular given the recent bubbles and busts in the market, some of which seemed predictable after the fact. But, the theory is more robust than you might think. And yet, a central premise of this book is that we must accept the fallibility of our judgment if we want to come to more accurate predictions. To the extent that markets are reflections of our collective judgment, they are fallible too. In fact, a market that makes perfect predictions is a logical impossibility.
Nate Silver (The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't)
Paying attention to how to use your words more effectively and efficiently will make you a more productive communicator overall. The training that contributing to free and open source software provides in how to communicate effectively and efficiently will pay dividends throughout your career.
V.M. (Vicky) Brasseur (Forge Your Future with Open Source: Build Your Skills. Build Your Network. Build the Future of Technology.)
Over recent years, BHP Management introduced a progressive dividend model, quite at odds with what would typically be expected of a mining company. Traditionally, earnings have been poured into asset development and future growth, rather than a reward to shareholders in the form of an enhanced dividend.
Andrew Baxter
The theory stresses that a stock’s value ought to be based on the stream of earnings a firm will be able to distribute in the future in the form of dividends or stock buybacks.
Burton G. Malkiel (A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing)
Pair 3: American Home Products Co. (drugs, cosmetics, household products, candy) and American Hospital Supply Co. (distributor and manufacturer of hospital supplies and equipment) These were two “billion-dollar good-will” companies at the end of 1969, representing different segments of the rapidly growing and immensely profitable “health industry.” We shall refer to them as Home and Hospital, respectively. Selected data on both are presented in Table 18-3. They had the following favorable points in common: excellent growth, with no setbacks since 1958 (i.e., 100% earnings stability); and strong financial condition. The growth rate of Hospital up to the end of 1969 was considerably higher than Home’s. On the other hand, Home enjoyed substantially better profitability on both sales and capital.† (In fact, the relatively low rate of Hospital’s earnings on its capital in 1969—only 9.7%—raises the intriguing question whether the business then was in fact a highly profitable one, despite its remarkable past growth rate in sales and earnings.) When comparative price is taken into account, Home offered much more for the money in terms of current (or past) earnings and dividends. The very low book value of Home illustrates a basic ambiguity or contradiction in common-stock analysis. On the one hand, it means that the company is earning a high return on its capital—which in general is a sign of strength and prosperity. On the other, it means that the investor at the current price would be especially vulnerable to any important adverse change in the company’s earnings situation. Since Hospital was selling at over four times its book value in 1969, this cautionary remark must be applied to both companies. TABLE 18-3. Pair 3. CONCLUSIONS: Our clear-cut view would be that both companies were too “rich” at their current prices to be considered by the investor who decides to follow our ideas of conservative selection. This does not mean that the companies were lacking in promise. The trouble is, rather, that their price contained too much “promise” and not enough actual performance. For the two enterprises combined, the 1969 price reflected almost $5 billion of good-will valuation. How many years of excellent future earnings would it take to “realize” that good-will factor in the form of dividends or tangible assets? SHORT-TERM SEQUEL: At the end of 1969 the market evidently thought more highly of the earnings prospects of Hospital than of Home, since it gave the former almost twice the multiplier of the latter. As it happened the favored issue showed a microscopic decline in earnings in 1970, while Home turned in a respectable 8% gain. The market price of Hospital reacted significantly to this one-year disappointment. It sold at 32 in February 1971—a loss of about 30% from its 1969 close—while Home was quoted slightly above its corresponding level.*
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
You can never predict the future, but I can guess by looking at the past performance of the companies I want to invest in. That is why consistency is extremely important.
Giovanni Rigters (Smart Investors Keep It Simple: Investing in dividend stocks for passive income)
The long-term increase in the stock market is entirely the result of the increase in long-term dividends and earnings growth of the companies that make up the market. How much investors are willing to pay for those earnings and dividends will change constantly. Much of these fluctuations have to do with speculation, but most of them have to do with the fact that investors are constantly projecting out the recent past into an uncertain future. That doesn't mean the odds are stacked against individual investors; just the ones who are unable to control their emotions.
Ben Carlson (A Wealth of Common Sense: Why Simplicity Trumps Complexity in Any Investment Plan (Bloomberg))
According to Poterba’s calculations, shown in Table 1.5, taxable investors in stocks might lose as much as 3.5 percentage points per year to taxes. In the context of a pre-tax return of 12.7 percent per year, the tax burden dramatically reduces the rewards for investing in equities. The absolute level of the tax impact on bond and cash returns falls below the impact on equity returns, but taxes consume a greater portion of current-income-intensive assets. According to Poterba’s estimates, 28 percent of gross equity returns go to the tax man, while taxes consume 38 percent of bond returns and 42 percent of cash returns. Table 1.5 Taxes Materially Reduce Investment Returns Pre-Tax and After-Tax Returns (Percent) 1926 to 1996 Source: James M. Poterba, “Taxation, Risk-Taking, and Household Portfolio Behavior,” NBER Working Paper Series, Working Paper 8340 (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2001), 90. Tax laws currently favor long-term gains over dividend and interest income in two ways: capital gains face lower tax rates and incur tax only when realized. The provision in the tax code that causes taxes to be due only upon realization of gains allows investors to delay payment of taxes far into the future. Deferral of capital gains taxes creates enormous economic value to investors.*
David F. Swensen (Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment)
The future return for stocks can be estimated as the dividend yield plus the growth rate in dividends plus any expected change in the dividend yield (the latter accounts for a change in stock market valuation). Using the dividend growth rate over the past twenty years of roughly 4% and a current dividend yield of 2.1%, this would mean that you could expect stocks to return roughly 6% a year over the next ten years or so.
Ex (Simple Stock Trading Formulas: How to Make Money Trading Stocks)