Hunter certainly doesn't **need** another endorsement. His interviews, posts, & Substack essays speak for themselves. But I am happy to do so & expect him to be a thoughtful & sought-after market commentator & participant for decades to come.

H/t Karl Kaufman

Is a Russia a Western country? The question is loaded (i.e., what is/has been the 'West'), but Russia has been debating this internally & externally for 300 years. The ambivalence in re the answer explains a lot of what otherwise appears to be inexplicable R policy/ actions.

R should be esp'ly alarmed. It's not a matter of replacement rates; R's population is just collapsing. Moreover, adjust for R's size & its ability to control its vast territories gets called into ??: Crimea, Kal'grad, Far East... They came; they could go.
wsj.com/world/birthrat…?

Print edition goes with Drifters. Made me wonder about the article to be written about the high-profile Grifters in the US also doing R's bidding.

wsj.com/articles/the-m…

Not a pivot East as much as another iteration of the centuries-long, ambivalence-filled zig-zag course of R & the West. R brings little to the table other than energy/minerals, & the lands taken from C in 1860. R elites--not interested. H/t max seddon
on.ft.com/3V1OeYP

Wanna change the business & investment world? Change the incentives. Wanna change the incentives? Change depreciation schedules/
definitions.

Possibly the single biggest driver of variance in business decisions & the # #s used in investment analysis.

Accounting matters, a lot.

When is a div not a div? When locked in a low-yielding treasure chest. 76 SP5 cos have ylds of 1%/lower, yet they represent some ~$92 billion/up to 15% of total SP5 divs. 'Aristocrats,' yld-on-cost, & 'shareholder yield' don't really unlock the treasure.
danielxperis.substack.com/p/when-is-a-di…

Heading to $1t, yes, t in buybacks. Everett Dirksen, hold my beer. Even after compensation /acquisition offsets, that's a big #.

Do they help shareholders, or sharesellers? Wall Street or Main Street? Yep, I'm on the wrong side of the Ken French divide.

wsj.com/articles/stock…

New Big Tech divs are coming in at ~0.5% ylds. What about big non-tech cos that don't pay yet, but soon might? If BRK was eventually to go down that path, it would add another $4.4b to SP5 total divs. A 1% starting yield would add $8.8b. More big $$$s locked away in low yields.

% of SP5 divs locked away in ultralow ylds. E.g. 2 largest payers. % will move up ~3% this year due to newest tech initiations. Another result of tech dominance/narrowness past 5 yrs. Read to the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner: 'water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.'

Worth noting the strange circumstance that the top aggregate payers in the SP5, MSFT($20b) & AAPL($15b) are inaccessible to investors insisting on meaningful income streams. (Both have ylds less than 1%). Google will now be a top 10 payer, but has a similar yield.
Three of ten.

Apparently so. Paul Sweeney & tom keene were supposed to deliver the message!

Context: Apple increased its dividend obligation by $620 million annually, but increased its buyback authorization by $110 billion, yes, billion. No shift yet.

Total annual div obligation will be ~$15.5 billion, a huge absolute number, but a yield for new dollars of just 0.54%.

This!

Flattered to be asked back by tom keene & Paul Sweeney on Bloomberg Podcasts/Bloomberg Radio to discuss tech companies turning to dividends. Even more flattered that Tom continues to waveThe Little Orange Book around.

Now that the dam holding back dividends from tech giants has been breached, my thoughts on who is next:
danielxperis.substack.com/p/so-who-is-ne…

Two brutal takedowns of America-last, Mearsheimer isolationism in Steve Kotkin's latest for Foreign Affairs

Thank you 2daMoon .

today's post-google must-read

amazon.com/Ownership-Divi…

Daniel Peris