Every once in a while the underdog succeeds and the movie No is about an underdog succeeding. The country of Chile in South America is location for the movie for the President, Augusto Pinochet, was in power for 15 years and wanted to extend his reign; but he needed the public to vote – the vote was either Yes or No. In the prior 15 years, Chile had zero votes and public dissent was met by police or internal agencies who applied torture or water cannons or batons or locked away people for a week or longer and sometimes the person did not come out alive. Into that context was the ability to have a say. In the movie No released in 2012 by Sony staring Gael Garcia Bernal, not surprisingly, the organizers of the No campaign were watched. Both No and Yes sides had 15 minutes an evening on Chile National TV to do their campaign, technically the other 23.5 hours were for the Yes side. In the overwhelming political controlled environment, with few resources but creativity, the No side through the optimism of Hope and the need to change the management won. Chile’s President was changed without bloodshed.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, at times it will feel the dividend paying companies are the established ones, however in order to keep paying a dividend they have need to have campaigns of hope. They need to be seen as a start up – having optimism for the future, serving their customers, listening to their customers and not being too arrogant. Prior to the internet, it took considerable more resources to take on an established organization, now it needs a group of driven people with access to computers or any small business. A number of years ago, the author was involved with a political campaign with $15,000 and the other side had over $500,000 to work with. We won, because we were right, nimble and driven to work harder than the well funded campaign. It just meant the team shared information more freely than the other side did – if you agree with us go to our website download the material and work in your neighbourhood, town or city, just let us know what your are doing. As long as the dividend paying company is tuned to its customers, the reason for alternatives will be limited, otherwise look to alternative companies.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions