After you have made money and the dividends are flowing into your account, you might think about diversifying your portfolio into art. For hundreds of years, people have been collecting art and artists need patrons to exist. For every type of artwork, there is somebody who really likes it and wants to own it. Sometimes figuring out who they are is the tough part to selling art, but there is a market. As prices begin to rise for the artwork, there is somebody who wants to copy the style and sell you their art disguised as the original or there is fraud in artwork.

Only after an artist becomes famous and their artwork is catalogued and carefully maintained can a person buy the art without really knowing it is a fake or not. If you think about the great masters, they often had apprentices, did the master do the work or the apprentice, but it was the master’s vision. After learning, did the apprentice copy the master or develop their own style? who knows.

In an article by Tara Deschamps of The Canadian Press, for one artist Norwal Morriseau there is an app for that.

Mr. Morrisseau was an artist for most of his life but became famous late in life. He lived a varied life with and without a great deal of money which meant that people knew and like the style, but few people knew if the paintings were fake or not. In the past years, many collectors have discovered their paintings were fake as more than 6,000 fake paintings were sold at a cost of $100 million. The fraud is known as the biggest art fraud in world history.

In the case of Mr. Morrisseau, an app called Acrylic Robotics founded by Chloe Ryan. The software runs on AWS or Amazon Web Services and logs every movement, detecting millions of details in one piece, including the strokes, brush pressure, pigment and speed.

If anomalies can be detected, then art experts, historians can dig further.

Apparently most art experts who value art are staying away from Mr. Morrisseau’s art because of the great many fakes.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in all businesses, fraud is a concern. It is rallying cry to cut fraud from the public service. What is fraud? AI can help and over the next few months and years, we soon will see the auditors used AI to detect fraud in the books.

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

In recent weeks, President Trump went to Pittsburg to announce major AI investments at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University. Companies are spending over $90 billion in projects such as data centers, energy innovation center. The private sector companies investing include: Amazon, BlackRock, Alphabet, Gecko Robotics, EQT, and PNC Financial. The collaboration between universities, the government and private companies will make Pittsburg a hub.

In an article by Meaghan Tobin of the New York Times News Service, when China is contrasted to the US, it is the government allocating the resources to AI.

China is closing the gap which the US leads, to make technologies that rival the human brain. The Chinese government has spent a decade funneling resources in AI as well as electric vehicles and solar power industries.

Kyle Chan, an adjunct researcher at the RAND Corp, said China is applying state support across the entire AI tech stack, from chips to data centers.

For the past 10 years, Beijing has pushed Chinese companies to build manufacturing capabilities in high-tech industries for which the country previously depended on imports. That approach helped China become maker to a 1/3 of the world’s manufactured goods and a leader in electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels. It also applied to the essential building blocks of advanced AI systems: computing power, skilled engineers and data resources. A Wall Street Journal video on Black Factory – an automobile factory lights were on low because 99% of the work being done was by robots, people were needed to maintain the robots. The auto company was lowering prices because the robots work 24/7.

In the US, the emphasis is on private companies, in China it is the central government. To concentrate talent, the Chinese government financed a series of labs where much of the advanced AI research takes place, often in collaboration with big Chinese tech companies such as Alibaba and ByteDance.

The Chinese government has directed banks and local government to go on a lending spree that fuelled hundreds of startups. Since 2014, the semiconductor fund has spent nearly $100 billion with $8.5 billion to startups. For local government, they have sent up entire neighborhoods that function as startup incubators such as Dream Town in Hangzhou, which is home to Alibaba and DeepSeek and is known as a hot spot for AI talent.

The government covers 10-15% of the costs for startups. When Deep Principle moved to Hangzhou, it received $2.5 million subsidy as well as local officials helped with office space and housing for employees.

There are advantages and disadvantages with the Central government setting directives such as the many are caught off guard with advances in generative AI behind ChatGPT model.

Chinese companies use open-source models as the fastest way to catch up to Silicon Valley which makes it easier for engineers around the world to build on their systems. What will be the world’s standard?

Linking to dividend paying stocks, some of these companies are profitable because what they do is the standard in the world. Everyone else has to do the same thing and as long as the company can continue to offer leadership, they will be the first choice of customers. In technology, things change quickly, but the returns tend to be built over the long-term. It is hard not to start with the largest companies as your partner. Companies often see their competition from around the world, while western governments want to focus on inside their borders because consumers see what is in front of them. There are many competing interests, which makes even if there are flaws in the model, the government is looking in the correct direction.

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

One of the many methods large companies stay large is to buy smaller companies particularly when they have assets which offer profits for generations to come. The larger companies can afford to pay a healthy premium and the owners of the smaller company will typically convert some of their shares into owning a piece of the larger company. It is easier to see the process in the commodities or natural resources sector. In the tech sector, companies are buying talent.

In an article by Michelle Chapman of the Associated Press, in the oil industry, one of the biggest discoveries of oil is off the coast of Guyana. The country will soon be the 4th largest offshore oil producer in the world being ahead of Qatar, the US, Mexico and Norway.

In the world of offshore drilling, because of the expense and risk, companies often partner up and fight for the best blocks. Three companies of Exxon, China’s CNOCC and Hess have squared off in a heated competition for the lucrative oil fields in northern South America,

Chevron was late to the party, decided to buy Hess for $53 billion in October of 2023. With the ruling, Mr. Hess (also owner of the New York Jets football team) joins the board of directors of Chevron.

Exxon sued Chevron at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, France which Chevron won. Exxon said they disagree with the ICC panel’s interpretation but respect the arbitration and dispute resolution process.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in the world of natural resources, all the players know each other, they serve on many industry associations, but they are competitive in the marketplace, particularly with trophy assets. A trophy asset means a license to print money, if the asset is well managed. Often smaller companies find the assets, but it costs a great deal of money to develop the asset and for that the larger companies are needed. When the company you own has a trophy investment, all you have to do is determine if the asset is well managed and will continue to produce profits for the company otherwise it is time to find alternatives.

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

In every country, what is in the national interest is an issue. From an outsider, the answer seems confusing, because the laws do not seem to be applied equally. However, if the desired national interest is successful, then the results could be construed as the ends justifies the means.

In an article by Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang of Reuters, the South Korean top court cleared Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y Lee of accounting fraud and stock manipulation removing a long-running legal risk for the country’s biggest company.

Samsung Electronics is the world’s top memory chip and number two smartphone maker. It is part of the Samsung Group is the most successful family-run conglomerate which helped Korea transform after WW II to a leading global economy.

The court case cleared Mr. Lee for charges related to two Samsung affiliates, Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries, which prosecutors said was designed to cement Mr. Lee’s control of the tech giant. The merger was $8 billion in 2015.

Analysts said the ruling clears a layer of legal uncertainty, which could be a long-term positive for the company.

Samsung’s lawyers said they were sincerely grateful to the court for its decision and added, the merger was legal.

The Korean Enterprise Federation said the ruling removes a major legal burden for Samsung and comes at a time of intensifying global competition in high-tech industries such as AI and semi-conductors.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, every profitable company gets sued and that is why they have legal staff in house and on call. The legal system takes time and sometimes companies go into the grey area. In this case, there was a disagreement over a $8 billion merger because one can easily imagine that given Mr. Lee’s pardon from a former President of the Korea and the prominence of the Lee family in Korea, the case had to be very good, or it would not have gone forward. Many profitable companies that can pay dividends, the relationship between the President and government officials means the case has to be extra airtight to go forward, it is just a fact of life.

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

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If you have been following the news since President Trump announced Liberation Day or tariffs on every country in the world, the heaviest tariffs were place on China. The US is the world’s largest economy and China is second. They both share values in capitalism, although the internal politics are different and for that reason China is an enemy or a friend worth watching. The US is the biggest consumer of Chinese goods, so tariffs make goods more expensive or should have an effect on inflation in the US.

In an article by James Griffiths of Reuters, the Chinese economy grew 5.2% in the 2nd quarter, a better-than-expected rate.

According to official statistics, GDP growth was down from the 1st quarter of 5.4%. One would have expected GDP to be up in the first quarter as companies stocked up on items before the tariffs were imposed.

China has focused on domestic consumers buying more of the goods being produced for the US but now they are more expensive, there are surpluses. In a statement for China’s statistics bureau said consumption is now the backbone of growth.

In addition to the emphasis on domestic spending, the central government of China was ramped up infrastructure spending, added consumer subsidies, the bank rate or interest rates were cut in an effort to cushion the economy from the effects of tariffs.

China is aiming for a 5% growth, but companies such as Oxford Economics believes that growth will only be 4.7% up from 4.3%.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, while China is the second largest economy and is the manufacturing hub for the US, the US only accounts for 15% of the GDP. The country is diversified which means tariffs hurt, it does not mean the economy goes into a tailspin. If you buy a profitable making company that can pay dividends, you can determine where the bulk of the revenues come from and how they will and could adjust to markets being cut off for a period of time. Most profitable companies are reasonably diversified and can continue making profits, it is just not as big till the company adjusts to the markets they were cut off from.

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

There was a movie called Jery McGuire that was about a football agent and one of his clients in the movie said “show me the money! and had Jerry repeat the phrase. That phrase is a good way to examine how companies spending their money on. What you as an individual or what a company spends money on or the allocation of resources, is the priority.

In an article by Jaspreet Singh and Aditya Soni of Reuters, Mark Zuckerberg said, Meta Platforms will spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build several massive AI data centers for superintelligence.

The social media giant is among the largest tech companies in the world. The first multi gigawatt data center dubbed Prometheus is expected to come online in 2026.

Industry publication Semi Analysis noted Meta was on track to be the first AI lab to bring a gigawatt-plus supercluster online.

Meta the owner of Facebook and many other sites generated $165 billion in revenue last year, reorganized its AI efforts under a division called Superintelligence Labs. The division is to be led by former Scale AI CEO Alexadr Wang and ex-GritHub chief Nat Friedman. Meta bought Scale for $14.3 billion.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, profitable companies generate lots of revenues and one of the most important jobs of the Senior Executive is the allocation of resources or show me the money. When you do your homework, because homework is never done, how your companies allocated their resources is what is important?

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

A few weeks ago, President Trump decided that he did not like the Brazilian Supreme Court trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro who was charged with trying to overturn his 2022 election loss and is set to increase the tariff on Brazil to 50%.

In an article by Gabriela Sa Pessoa and Mauricio Savarese of the Associated Press, they examined what does the US import from Brazil and what would the consequences for the American consumer? Two of the biggest crops grown in Brazil are oranges and coffee.

Ibiapaba Netto, a director of the Brazilian association for citrus juice exporters, said Brazil has no replacement for a country that buys 3 billion litres of orange juice every year and the US does not have enough product at home. About 40% of Brazil’s orange juice go to the US. But about 60% of US imports of orange juice comes from Brazil. Except for a few companies producing 100% Florida orange juice, every other brand depends on Brazil because of a citrus disease in Florida, it could not make up the difference.

America’s coffee habit is almost exclusively on imports. Brazil provides 30% of the American market, followed by Columbia by 20% and Vietnam at 10%.

If tariffs increase imports, then consumers will pay higher prices.

In terms of beef production, Roberto Perosa, president of the Brazilian Association of Exporting Industries, said he had been meeting with partners since the announcement.

Although JBS SA is the largest meat processing enterprise in the world, which is majority controlled by Brazilians with operations in the US, Brazil’s beef is not a competitor for the US as Brazil has offered high production volumes in recent years, which has helped American consumers buy cheaper products.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, all decisions tend to have consequences, and it is important to know what they are. If the government wants to go ahead, that is ok but there will be consequences in terms of higher prices for consumers, it all depends on what you believe the government wants at the end. If it a good thing, then people will pay higher prices and all is ok. If you want lower prices, then finding an alternative will be a motivation.

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

It used to be that there was a barrier or China Wall between the President and some of the holdings which made his family wealthy. Under President Trump the barrier was broken down and the shining example is Truth Social.

In an article by Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times News Service, the President had a falling out with Elon Musk the owner of Twitter which became X and started Truth Social. All social media sites sell advertising to pay the bills and Truth Social has struggle to expand its user base and attract advertisers beyond those selling to President Trump’s fan base. The company has 29 employees and never made a big commitment to selling ads and only has a few people on staff charged with that task. The company incurred a net loss of $31 million in the first quarter of the year.

However, Truth Social has 10 million followers because the President has no official position at Trump Media and does not advise on corporate policy, he is the largest shareholder. The President uses Truth Social as his primary social media channel. According to Similarweb, roughly 80% of the traffic for Truth Social is to view comments of the President.

In the past few months, President Trump has become a major player in the crypto industry. Truth Social raised $2.5 billion from selling stocks and bonds to dozens of hedge funds and the Wall Street trading firm Jane Street Capital.

The $2.5 billion is being invested in a partnership with Crypto.com, a Singaporean based cryptocurrency exchange to launched 3 ETFs to trade on the New York Stock Exchange. The ETFs will be called Truth Social Bitcoin ETF, Truth Social Bitcoin Ethereum ETF and Truth Social Crypto Blue Chip ETF. The money will make Trump Media the 4th-largest public company to hold bitcoin.

Trump Media will be competing with a dozen other firms including iShares, a division of Blackrock, the world’s largest asset management firm. Bryan Armour, the director of ETF research at Morningstar said there is not much to distinguish the funds outside of the name.

On the regulatory front, the President has signaled his strong support for crypto and to rein in the SEC. Crypto companies donated $18 million to President Trump’s inaugural committee and President Trump has met with people from the industry at his golf courses and the White House.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, while there might be a role for crypto in one’s portfolio, people such as Warren Buffett are staying away because you need to ask your yourself the price will fluctuate but what keeps the price up besides the fear of missing out? What supports the price when it goes down? If you buy profitable stocks which can pay a dividend, when the market goes down the support level is the dividend payments. Eventually, when the market begins to recover, the value buyers will start buying profitable companies at lower prices and they will rise to their former levels the quickest.

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

In Washington, President Trump will issue an executive order on something to Make America Great Again and it will sound good. For the President and many people, they will buy the order, but for those in the industry they see reality and what it needs to make reality the truth.

In an article by Niall McGee of Reuters, President Trump wants to impose tariffs on copper but his plan to quickly boost domestic mining, smelting and refining capacity is a pipe dream says industry executives, analysts and consultants.

The tariffs are designed to repatriate industrial production to the US and encourage investment in the US. However, the push to do this will be extremely difficult in copper. And even if it happens on a small scale, it will take years.

Christoper LaFemina, an analyst with Jefferies, said the tariffs should incentivize some investment in mines and smelters, but to be achieved in less than a 10-year horizon is doubtful.

There are mines under development in Arizonia, but the reality is the earliest production expected is 2029.

The US is a significant global copper miner producing 1.1 million tones last year. But it relied on imports for about half of its needs. The biggest copper mines are in Chile which produced more than 5 million tones last year.

In terms of refining capacity, domestic capacity is 890,000 tones. In 2024, China which has dozens of smelters produced 12 million tones.

The last American company to build a smelter was Freeport-McMoRan which built one in Indonesian for $4 billion. The reason was the Indonesian government wanted it and ensured there were no environmental considerations to worry about. Very few communities in the US want a mining smelter in their backyard.

Mr. LaFemina of Jefferies believes the biggest beneficiaries of potential copper tariffs would be Freeport, which accounts for 60% of US mine production. A 50% tariff would bring in $2.8 billion in annual free cash flow. Other companies mentioned are Asarco, Rio Rinto PLC and Arizonia Sonoran Copper Company.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, with most government announcements, there are some potential winners, some losers and many that could be winners under the correct conditions and assuming higher prices in the raw material. Before you chase the stocks, do your homework which implies taking time. If the prices all jump, it tends to mean they will also fall back and when results actually happen they will rise again based on making money. As an investor, most of the time your job is to research or do your homework to decide when the market turns in the way you are hoping you benefit. On shows which discuss the stock market you will hear keep some dry powder or cash to invest. One way to build up the cash is buying dividend paying stocks and when the dividends are paid you can invest it into your list of potentials.

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