We all play a role in the economy and some are near the top and some are near the bottom all for a multiple reasons that can be rationalized. The ideal for the average person is to be in the middle with enough assets to go through the cycles of the economy and still be okay. At the top, there are very wealthy people and one way they achieved the wealth is hedge funds and private equity. There are many different paths, but any path which allows for money to be made is legal will draw many people to see if they can capitalize on the opportunities. There are risks and rewards in doing so, and for a glimpse of what it is like there are books to be read. One such book is called Private Equity, a Memoir by Carrie Sun, published by Penguin Press, NY, 2024.

The author’s job was to be the assistant to the firm’s billionaire founder. Working for a profitable firm is both stressful and full of perks and reasonably high pay. The events in the book are true, but the names are fictional. The author liked working for the firm, but the stress of maintaining expectations and always been ready to ensure her bosses had the necessary documents for meetings was relenting.

Similar to sports, the key is investing is not to win once but consistently overtime and that is easier said than done. The reason is once you are successful, every other firm will examine what did you do and how did you do it? what is the secret sauce? Conferences often have successful sport coaches talking about how they remained consistent for their careers.

The secret is simple. The first is compounding. Stay in the market as much as possible. Have it invested it. Wait out any panic and let it ride. let it grow. It is easier to do the richer you are.

In a crisis, the wealthy have the ability to keep buying or buy assets when they are inexpensive. Then wait till the world returns to a new normal and the asset prices rise. (When President Trump imposed tariffs on the world and stock markets went down, did you sell? hold? or buy? It took a month before some form of normalcy came back, but it did come back, and the stock market rose in value).

Access. If you have money, people will want a piece of it and bring all kinds of deals to you. The ability to say no is very important, but somewhere in all those deals can be the next big thing. Somewhere in the normal life cycle of companies will be the high growth phase, the hedge funds have tapped into this economic lifecycle. Once the companies have proven themselves, then they go public for the insiders to cash out some of their holdings, but at higher prices. Retail investors can get in, but companies used to go public at lower prices or what was known as penny stocks, now not so much.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, investing in profitable stocks which pay a dividend is using compounding and over time both the dividend payments and profitable companies tend to trade at higher multiples than non-profitable companies, means you will be richer. It all depends on how fast you wish to get there. As your assets grow, you will have options what to do with the money and having those types of options is a very good thing to have.

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

We live in a world where there are instant communications including news cycles. This tends to mean people think that things can get done quickly. Although it is possible, timelines are falling thanks to AI and technology, but there tends to be a time delay. President Trump communicates on a social media platform and has a press conference just about every day, even when there is not much to say or was done. This means reporters ask for details and they can refer to officials who often say we will get back to you.

In an article by Jill Lawless and Rajesh Roy of the Associated Press, Britain and India announced after more than 3 years of negotiating, a free trade agreement was signed. On the British side, the government had changed which lead to some delays.

PM Starmer said this is the biggest trade deal that we in the UK have done since we left the UK and the most ambitious trade deal that India has ever done. Understanding that prior to India’s independence, the UK essentially ran India. When the industrial revolution happened in Britain, it forced India’s clothing mills closed so the population could only buy British textiles.

The deal which must be ratified by both countries, comes as the US wishes to strike deals in 90 days. This deal took 3 years for both countries to be satisfied with the outcome.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, one of the reasons to buy these stocks is the time horizon. Ideally you are going to buy and hold as long as the company makes a profit to pay dividends. This means you need to ensure they can make a profit, but the amount of homework you need to do on a regular basis allows you to focus on other activities of your life.

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

In the 1960’s there was a song on the radios sung by the Byrds called Turn! Turn! Turn! and its lyrics had the phrase To everything, turn, turn, turn There is a season, turn, turn, turn And a time to every purpose, under heaven. If you drop the turn. To everything there is a season.

That phrase is very purposeful for the world in general. Typically, there is more rain in the springtime which is good time to plant things. In the summer it is warmer, and hopefully the seeds became crops. When they grow, it will be time to harvest in the fall and when it is cold to let the land fallow or do something else. The phrase to everything there is a season is very important for the retail world.

The retail world depends on supply chains. How does something get on the shelf? It means to work backwards, hopefully using AI to help plan. The idea is what were the sales last year and how long does it take when a shopkeeper orders the goods to when it arrives from whoever manufacturers it. In the retail world there are seasons, people rarely buy winter coats in the summer, they buy shorts and t shirts. That means the supply system tends to work 3 to 6 months in advance. If you know anyone in the advertising business, they are working on Christmas campaigns in the summer and Summer campaigns in the wintertime. It is always possible to short time lines, but it is generally they way it works.

In an article by Daisuke Wakabayashi of the New York Times News Service, President Trump imposed tariffs across the board to countries around the world. As President, technically under the certain conditions he can do that, unless someone sues to determine the national crisis is not a national crisis and wins. Then the President has to work with Congress to approve the policy. In the meantime, it is what the law is.

Tariffs mean the importer pays a higher price. Whether the importer decreases their margins or passes it on the customer is debatable, but generally it means higher prices to the consumer. Partly because the companies which are the alternatives tend to raise prices, because the public accepts higher prices will be a result of the policies.

Factories in China produce nearly 80% of all the toys and 90% of the Christmas goods sold in the US. The production of toys, Christmas trees and decorations usually ramps up in the springtime. It takes about 4 to 5 months to manufacture, package and ship products to the US. Then they have to be distributed to the stores across the country.

President Trump imposed a 145% tariff or doubling of all prices. No retailer is going to eat the tariffs, they will pass on higher prices. How much will people buy is the issue?

Greg Ahearn, CEO of the Toy Association of US representing 850 toy manufacturers said if the production does not start very soon, there is a high probability of shortages by Christmas. Largely to logistics.

One of the primary reasons the toys are made in China is because Chinese manufacturing is unmatched in its production and capability. Toy makers change large portions of the product line every year to adapt to changing preferences of children. From materials to machinery, China’s factories are one stop-shops for importers. (the designers are typically in the US).

Kara Dyer, founder of Storytime Toys, a maker of children’s books with playset numbers, usually places an order in April to have inventory by mid-July. The Christmas holidays account for 2/3’s of her revenue. Kara placed a small order of $30,000, under a 145% tariff, the tariffs will be $45,000. The price of toys has automatically gone up 20%.

In a Toy Association survey of 410 toy manufacturers with an annual sales of less than $100 million, more than 60% had cancelled orders. If the tariffs remain, 50% expect to go out of business.

Some companies have rerouted their inventory to Mexico or Canada in the hope the tariffs will be lowered. This is a partial solution as manufacturers have to start paying fees for storage and the longer the item stays in storage the bill becomes due, with no sales. When the item comes in the US, the tariff is on the originating country.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, often times somewhere in the music you listen is the story. Although you have to do plenty of backstory to fill in the gaps. With all goods, there are logistics involved and understanding how the logistics works helps you be a better investor as you decide to hold or find alternatives.

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

Most of the world is excited by some form of technology or other. We are attracted to the shiny, the new, the possibility, and we can either participate or watch from the sidelines. In the world of technology there are always egos involved because the technology changes the established way of doing things. To be an early adapter, you need to take a risk and with all risk sometimes it works out wonderfully and sometimes money is lost.

In an article by Gus Carlson of the Globe and Mail, the two richest people on the planet are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. There sources of income are different – Mr. Bezos with Amazon and Mr. Musk with Tesla, but they compete in space. Their high-profile space race is taking passengers into space but their real competition is deploying satellites.

With Amazon, the need for connectivity is everywhere and one method to achieve it is through satellites. Project Kuiper is slated to deploy 3,000 low-Earth orbit satellites. This means soon where ever you go in earth, you should be able to get a signal. The cost to do this is $17 billion. Mr. Bezos was using a rocket going up on Florida’s Space Coast or Cape Canaveral.

Mr. Musk through Space X owns Star Link which has thousands of satellites in operation with over 5 million customers. The quality and reliability of the Starlink service is remarkably good. Mr. Musk uses the Brownsville, Texas location where he has launched numerous rockets and brought them back safely (there are some interesting You Tube videos about the rockets coming back).

Linking to dividend paying stocks, often with technology the race is to be the first out of the gate while achieving quality and reliability. The customers come and similar to many customers, once signed up, it takes a large effort to move to another provider. Often times it more profitable to invest in the company which is first to market, than in the second company, because the normal rules of business of revenues – expenses equals profit or loss.

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

Most of us live in areas where we grow up and expect services to operate and for the most part they do. When we wake up, we turn on a light to see and the electricity is there to operate the light and life goes on. Everyday that action happens, our expectations grow that it will continue into the future. When it does not, we are somewhere between surprised and outraged that the service is not there.

In an article by Jose Bautista, Jenny Gross and John Yoon of the New York Times News Service, in the countries of Spain and Portugal, the electricity went off for 18 hours. No one really knows what happened, but many investigates are going on.

Sara Aagesen, one of Spain’s Vice Presidents said we are collecting thousands of data points from the energy system to shed light on what happened.

President of Spain met with the National Security Council officials and the Council of Ministers to discuss the outages.

The Spanish government had not ruled out a cyberattack on the transmission grid, even though Red Electrica, Spain’s grid operator said there was no evidence of one.

The National Cryptologic Center which oversees cyberthreats was also investigating and a judge ordered reports within 10 days from Red Electrica, the intelligence services and the police.

The International Energy Agency in Paris noted there have been relatively few instances of disruption due to cyberattack, the issues are often related to equipment failures, operational errors and effects of storms.

After power was restored, Spain’s Interior Ministry downgraded the threat level from extreme to medium to normal.

Prime Minister Luis Montenegro of Portugal said after an emergency government meeting, it appears there was an abrupt increase in voltage in the Spanish grid which caused safety mechanism to kick it that led to the blackout.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, one of the things as investors you believe is there are systems in place when something goes wrong. It may be nothing illegal but there are multiple groups of knowledgeable people who can review the data and make a determination and hopefully it does not happen again. One of the ways you can determine this is how did the company react to threats that are made public. Was the problem solved? how long did it take? and how much did it cost the company?

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

If you ever read books about Sherlock Holmes, the weather played a part of the descriptions. One of the reasons London was foggy was people used coal to heat their homes. The upside is homes were warmer, the downside is the air was foggy for longer periods of time. If you look at pictures from LA or Bejing, both of those cities are built in bowls – the mountains surround the cities and the air pollution stays until the winds blow it away. Then all is good. President Trump has used the coal industry as a political pawn and wants to mine more coal. Although the reality is for an underground mine, there are machines which do the digging and for strip mining, there are environmental concerns when the coal has been taken away from the deposit.

In an article by John Raby and Leach Willingham of the Associated Press, the Trump administration wishes to help the struggling coal industry.

Particularly in the western states, the US government owns most of the lands, and an executive order allowed more mining on federal lands. At one time, more than half of the power generation facilities burned coal to generate heat to turn turbines to make electricity. Many coal plants have switched to natural gas because prices are low and the US has great resources of natural gas. However, there are coal plants still operating. The administration allowed the nearly 70 older coal plants to keep operating by the way of a 2 year exemption to reduce emissions of toxic chemicals.

The US Energy Information Administration produces data every year and for example in 2014, US production was 907,000 metric tonnes, by 2023 it had fallen to 524 metric tonnes or by half.

President Trump seems to think of coal employment at its peak in the 1920’s when there were 900,000 miners. In the 1950’s it had fallen to 350,000. In 2023 the number was 45,476. The states with the most mines are West Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming.

Elon Musk’s DOGE decided to save money on the mining safety agency MSHA by ensuring fewer inspectors inspect the mines and with less frequency.

Under President Carter, a fund was set up to restore land damaged by strip mining and reclaim closed coal mines. The agency responsible is called Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and was active in Lexington, Kentucky and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in every industry alternatives exist. For generations, immigrants came to America to work in the coal mines. The work paid but it was hard on bodies and never paid well, however it did allow coal to be mined. The process changed with the abilities of machines to do the work and more of it, which is better for everyone in the industry. It is the reason why there are fewer mine disasters, which is a good thing. If you invested in the coal industry, you will likely have long term holdings as the companies have consolidated to stay in business. Technology may bring new uses for coal, but that is still a pipe dream.

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

In Washington, and in reality everywhere else, the number one conversation is tariffs particularly with China. Who is talking to who and how long will it take to reach a deal? While administration press people say the President is talking to 200 countries, in reality a trade deal takes time. In the President’ first term – an agreement between US, Mexico and Canada (who are generally considered good partners) took 18 months. NAFTA was replaced by USMCA and signed by President Trump.

The global trade has evolved to what it was before President Trump signed the tariffs over 80 years and millions of people around the world moved from subsistence farming towards what is middle income in their countries. Under those conditions, it has been a success. Over the same period, the US economy moved from manufacturing to services and consumerism, with a small part of the economy related to manufacturing. Most people work in services including financial, tech, or retail and about 2/3’s of the US economy is related to buying goods or consumer shopping.

The global economy allowed China to start with relatively cheap goods and over the past decades the institutions of China now turnout extremely qualified individuals that can solve problems. Apple CEO Tim Cook said for his manufacturing needs, in the US he could fill a classroom, in China he can fill football fields. The post-secondary institutions in China are turning out great graduates.

All companies in the world, do not want to be dependent too much on others. President Trump has tapped into this dependence and all over the world people agree with the sentiment. However, it is debatable without trillion of dollars, the US would become independent.

Then you have China. David Rosenberg wrote in 2017 22% of goods imported in the US came from China. Today that number is 13%. This is due to a number of factors including sending their goods to a third country before they reach the US. It also due to the Belt and Road initiative which Chinese investment in infrastructure to countries around the world also means they receive Chinese goods.

China has options, the value of direct Chinese exports to the US in 2024 was about the same as it was in 2013. Meanwhile, the value of China’ exports to the EU has soared or China has diversified.

President Trump talk about shipping LNG, there was a huge market in China of 9.3 million tons and now it is near zero. This does not make Texans happy. Beijing is buying its LNG or gas purchases from the Middle East and Asia-Pacific countries.

Last week, China cancelled soybeans purchases from the US and bought from Brazil. Now only is China’s the US largest customer for soybeans, the backstop USAid used to buy surplus crops to send them overseas, the President through DOGE stopped it. Soybeans futures are down.

China not only mines most of the rare earth minerals that go into silicon chips, it processes the metal in China too.

In an article by Ana Swanson and Jonathan Swan of the New York Times News Service, the issue of who is talking to China was explored. The Treasury Secretary said he was talking to China about financial concerns but not tariffs. President Trump claims of talks have been rejected by Chinese officials from China’s Commerce Ministry. Any claims about progress in China-US economic and trade negotiations are baseless rumors without factual evidence.

What we do know is shipping container traffic at the business ports in Long Beach are down 60% which means less stuff is being shipped across the Pacific. Retailers are examining the 145% tariffs and looking at doubling prices, how much will people buy when prices are doubled?

Trump official have admitted the status quo with China on trade is not sustainable, and some have wanted lower tariffs. The White House insists it will not do that unless a deal is reached for China to do the same.

In the meantime, after 80 years of global supply system, on Wall Street as public companies give their quarterly and annual reports, fewer are giving guidance of what to expect in the next 3 months.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, not all companies will be affected by the tariffs, at least directly. In many industries, they bring in parts from around the world to produce a good and sell it, they will be affected. Many parts come from abroad and when something breaks down or needs replacing, an added and expensive delay will result. (a very small example, is I bought a bicycle from a national retail chain during Boxing Week Sales to ride it when the snow was gone. The back tire was bent and needed a new one, it took 3 months. Fortunately, most of the time the weather did not allow for it to be ridden). The tariffs will affect companies indirectly for example, banks lend money to people to do things. If they are not buying but saving, they make less money. If people are laid off collection dates go up as bills are paid on the last minute or late. There will be companies making money because of large moats and near monopolies, hopefully you have them in your portfolio.

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

Whenever there is a crisis, in the business section reporters reach out to many analysts for their viewpoint and the analysts will run their models to set expectations. Later the analysts will do more analysis, but the first draft will be able to give a good idea of what will likely happen, given the existing conditions. In every industry there are analysts doing similar work, but the ones that are reported on tend to be the higher profile companies.

In an article by Irene Galea and Sean Silcoff of Reuters, they wanted to know how will the tariffs announced by President Trump affect Apple.

The design and headquarters of Apple is in the US, but Apple became the world’s most valuable company by leveraging global-supply chains to make its best-selling consumer products. With a stroke of a pen or Sharpie, President Trump has changed that strength to a vulnerability.

80% of its iPhones are made in China with the other 20% made in India. The majority of its smart watches are made in Vietnam and the Mac computer is made in Malaysia. All those countries were put with high tariffs by the President.

36% of Apple’s revenues were generated in the US. If tariffs remain the same, importing the goods would cost Apple $39.5 billion a year which would slash its operating profit and annualized earnings by a third.

The solution is to raise prices for consumers to offset the rates or absorb the expenses seriously eroding margins. Counterpoint Research co-founder Neil Shah, believes prices will need to go up a minimum of 30%. If prices go up 30% will demand drop? how much is the question.

The other option is for Apple to lobby for exemptions based on the projected announcement of a new AI factory in Texas as part of a $500 billion investment in the US over the next 4 years.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, while the questions are known to everyone, the answers are generally a range and how efficient supply chains are and how much to raise prices not affecting sales and margins is an unknown, only the consumer knows the answer. All dividend paying stocks have analysts falling their companies which is why many companies fall into the estimates of projections. For slow growth companies it is only when something goes wrong, that estimates are not in line, for growth companies, beating estimates is a good thing.

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

In all society, we make a choice to do something one way or another and as long as it is legal society reflects that choice. Because the underlying aspect is legal, then it filters into everything else that society does. Thus it becomes very hard to change, because the solution is not a simple one. A great example is the oil industry. The oil industry replaced the killing of whale for the oil that lit lamps to allow people to read in the evenings. Otherwise, we would go to bed after the sun goes down.

in an article by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press, a Dartmouth College research team came up with the estimated pollution caused by 111 companies. About half came from fossil fuel producers: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil, Pemex, Coal India and British Coal Corp.

The 111 companies was estimated to have caused $28 trillion in climate damage. To provide context, $28 billion is the sum of all the goods and services produced in the US last year.

The study determined every 1% of greenhouse gas in the environment causes $502 billion from heat alone.

The researchers started with known final emissions of products produced by the biggest 111 companies going back 137 years. They used 1,000 different computer simulations to translate those emissions into changes for Earth’s global average surface temperature by comparing it to a world with that company’s emissions.

The system is modelled on the established techniques scientists have been using for more than a decade to attribute extreme weather events to climate change.

Although it is interesting topic for research, society has to determine whether we still value and what fossil fuel companies to do their thing which benefits society at large.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in many dividend paying portfolios are oil stocks and pipelines because they have a consistent return of dividends because the larger companies are very profitable, which allow them to pay dividends and raise them on a regular basis. Every industry has some downside and as an investor you can determine if you want to be directly holding stocks in that field. If you do, then the upside is profits and dividends.

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