Every once in a while boxing movies are made and you might remember Rocky or a scene from it, particularly from the first one in his training and the great music when he runs up the steps in Philadelphia. Another interesting boxing movie is called Southpaw staring Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker and others. You can watch this movie along a variety of lines – it is a boxing movie – the Jake character is the world champion; loses his wife and his life goes downhill; he learns to recover and is given a chance to recover his crown, which means there is a family story; there is personal story; and there is a boxing story. The boxing story is the interesting aspect for this column. In the ring, the Jake character boxes but he really never learnt the skills – he has a great ability to take punishment and in the later rounds come to life to defeat his opponents. The great ability to take punishment means when he is over 40 he would likely have brain damage, however that is another consideration. The Jake character goes to the Forest character to teach him about boxing. The Forest character uses simple and everyday techniques – such as fastening ribbons across the ring and having Jake move in and around the ring without touching the ribbons ( think of the movie Entrapment with Catherine Zeta-Jones). The art of learning is not hard, but does require effort.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, there are many methods to investing and some work some of the time, one of the things you are looking for is methods that are consistent and long-term. Investing in profitable companies means you will do better over the long-term because they are profitable which means people want to invest in them and along the way you get paid a dividend because the company is profitable. It is never too late, although if you look at which companies are profitable 50 years ago and today, some of the names will be the same. Over that time those profitable ones had their shares go up, split, pay a dividend and the owners are wealthier because the company remained profitable. On the list will be some companies that no longer exist – which is the reason why you need to be continuing learning about the markets.

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