In every country around the world, there is a division of male and females in the workforce. There could be practical reasons, but in reality, males typically go to work and make more money than women, while women look after the households. There are traditional reasons for this, if you consider the time of hunters and gathers, men went out to find and kill an animal for food (although just because they went out, does not mean they always came back with game).
It was the gathers or women looking after the children who found berries and whatever to eat that kept the families from starving. Later, men looked after domestic animals and did the bulk of the farming because it was heavy physical labor. Times have changed and technology makes it easier for both sexes to look after animals and do the planting or work on a computer.

In an article by Constant Meheut of the New York Times News Service, a country that has had a very tradition breakdown of men working and women and home is changing. The country of Ukraine is a war with Russia, which means many of the men have been drafted and sent to the front lines. For the rest of the economy, it still needs to function, and the country has been looking towards women as a solution.

In the article, DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company has seen 1,000 male workers drafted into the military or about a 1/5 of the workforce. It has hired 330 women.

Ukraine is a country where women were not encouraged to work outside the home, however the pay is good and the pension is generous. Women who did not imagine working, have changed their minds and are doing the work. For women, the biases are long held and include women are second class and less reliable workers, women cannot do physical work; the roles are considered too complicated for them such as driving a trolley bus.

For women in Britain and the US – many of them remember or heard about the iconic posters of Rosie the Riveter during male shortage of WWI and WW II.

In the Ukraine, 3/4’s of Ukrainian employers have experienced labor shortages. Before the war, 47% of women worked according to the World Bank. Since the war, about 13% or 1.5 females have left the country. For the ones that have stayed in the country, more opportunities have opened up, but the country still has a labor shortage.

In the mining industry, there were no women because the law banned women from working in mines. Since the war, the law has been changed and there are women miners. One of the women working says for now she is staying because the schools are open and where would she go? In every job, people need supports and as long as they exist or made stronger, the longer the person stays.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, we all have biases. Sometimes it easier to see them in a different country, but things can change, and it can be for the better for everyone. In your investing, you will have and see bias and it is good to know what it is. Sometimes it is regional companies, sometimes it is not the competition in the industry you worked for, but we have biases. Over time and earning profits in an industry and you will slowly overcome some of the biases.

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

In the world of energy production, we know that utilities will tend to use the lowest cost production, which is why when coal prices increased, many utilities switched to gas plants. There were other reasons, if you produce electricity with coal, the burning of the coal emits excessive carbon dioxide, and one hopes the wind continually blows the air to disperse the carbon to a wider area. However, there will be excessive carbon produced. If a city is a bowl-shaped environment similar to LA and Beijing, on good days there are many wonderful reasons to live there, on days when the wind does not disperse the air, smog grows. If you think about the novels on Sherlock Holmes concerning London, there was smog in the air (people were burning coal in their homes). Change of heating source, changed the air.

In an article by Ken Moritsugu of the Associated Press, approvals for new coal-fired power plants in China has dropped according to analysis by Greenpeace East Asia. 14 new coal plants were approved between January and June with a total capacity of 10.3 gigawatts down 80% from 50.4 gigawatts in the same time last year.

In 2022, authorities approved 90.7 gigawatts and in 2023 106.4 gigawatts.

At the same time, China leads the world in solar and wind power installations.

In turns of extreme weather events, the Ministry of Water Resources said there were 23 significant floods this year. As well as China had landslides which can about because of flash flooding.

Seasonal flooding is common in southern China, the historically drier northeast and areas bordering on North Korea are beginning to get heavier amounts of rain. This causes floods and cut power and communications in Jianchang.

The National Energy Administration has unveiled a 3-year program to retrofit existing coal power units and equip newly built ones with low-carbon technologies. Coal provides 60% of China’s of the country’s electricity.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, there are always tradeoffs in the production process and ideally for citizens they would like to have the less mitigating circumstances as possible. Sometimes it is possible but expensive, sometimes it is overlooked and hoped the environment can absorb and clean up the process and sometimes it is costly after the lawsuits. It is a balancing act for margins and government actions or inactions.

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

Every country will wrestle with energy costs particularly for large manufacturing industries. The large manufacturing companies likely grew over the years and one of the factors was relatively low-cost energy prices. However, along the way was productivity improvements, new technologies and the continual update of the processes. All of that takes input from the company and supplier companies and how much does the company do internally and how much can it or does it want to outsource the process? At the present time, there is political pressure to ensure the energy comes from renewables as much as possible, but the reality is oil, gas and coal are still needed. How does a country such as Germany cope?

In an article by Irene Galea of Reuters, major German manufacturers say the country’s high energy prices and lack of reliable energy sources are forcing them to consider restricting domestic production or moving their operations aboard.

For context, before Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany was dependent on relatively inexpensive Russian oil and gas. That came to a stop when the European Community backed Ukraine and the pipeline blew up. Germany had to scramble and build new facilities to allow the oil and gas from Norway and the US and elsewhere to make up the shortfall, however prices rose and fell, but are still twice as expensive as a few years ago.

51% of large companies in Germany with over 500 employees and 45% of firms with high electricity costs are considering relocating facilities and cutting domestic production or already doing so. This is according to the 2024 Energy Transition Barometer survey by the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry. These figures are up 8% and 7% respectively from last year. The chamber’s survey was conducted between June 10 and 30 and included responses from 3,283 companies.

Germany aims to reach net greenhouse neutral by 2045 and legally mandate coal phase out by 2038. The government has committed billions of dollars to the transition including a $6 billion subsidy for companies in energy intensive industries (steel, glass, chemicals and paper production).

Companies such as BASF and Speira GmbH (an aluminum supplier) have cut back production.

In Germany, manufacturing accounts for 20% of the country’s economy as of 2021, according to the German federal statistics office.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, all companies have inputs to production and when gross margins fall because of unexpected increases in basic production, something has to be done to cut costs to ensure margins are met or can be increased in the near future. Companies are started for various reasons, originally, they were on a river or lake because transportation was by water. Then we moved to railroads and finally to highways and airplanes to move goods and services. There are advantages to all of the methods of transportation and ideally business loves a stable pricing system. Productivity improvements including technical improvements can be a great help but still the costs creep into the equation. Companies will move to where they benefit the most or have the greatest options, notwithstanding their connection to the place they started.

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

In every profession, there is a search for patterns and the patterns can tell the expert what has happened. The easiest way to consider this statement is to think about paintings. In some Reels or Facebook video clips from the National Gallery in London, UK are videos to help people look at paintings and gain greater enjoyment from the art which hangs in their galleries. As you look at art differently, you may come more often to the art gallery. In journalism, there are the 5 W – Who? Wait? When? Where? and Why? and if you are curious to ask, you will be rewarded with a many destinations. No matter what industry or event, there will be patterns or references which helps you determine the origin or source material.

In a book called The Lazarus Heist by Geoff White, published by Penguin Random House, London UK, 2022. The Lazarus reference is to the evolution of cybersecurity crimes and links to North Korea.

In the age of the internet, eventually most of the world’s institutions and largest companies are connected into the internet because of the tremendous benefits it brings. The downside is everything that can be used for good of the company and mankind can be used to the opposite of good. Sometimes the people are on the other side are crooks, sometimes they are paid by someone wealthy enough to pay them to steal from others and there are many permutations along the way.

In the book, the writer Mr. White explains how cybersecurity works and equally how those that are trying to protect people try to see which patterns exist and how seemingly isolated events are connected. When the US government says another government is at fault, it is based on the patterns of the programs and where they send the money if they are successful in stealing.

In the US there are multiple divisions in the government that focus on cybersecurity and they are typically embedded in National Security, Treasury and the Secret Service, whose job is more than to protect the President. The role of government is technically for everyone, which implies a certain openness to information. The people who wish to steal money, need access to the openness to move towards the people that can pay money to have their systems running normally. It is a cat and mouse situation that really never changes.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, reading a book such as The Lazarus Heist explains why cybersecurity budgets are here to stay and the firms that offer protection are similar to insurance payments. Everyone pays for insurance in the hopes of never using it, but it is there if you need it. You will have to do your homework because not every company is the best in the breed for every industry, but having one in your portfolio is a good thing.

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

In our daily lives we have choices to spend our money and one way is to walk through a supermarket. On the shelves will be thousands of products and you will have a choice to buy particular items. There are industries designed to reinforce your decision to buy – whether that is marketing and advertising. You may make a decision based on price or brand or likely a combination of many factors. One of the factors which could influence the decision is who owns what products? and are they investable?

In an article by Anirban Sen, Savyata Mishra, Jessica Dinapoli and Abigail Summerville of Reuters, family owned candy giant Mars Inc is buying Kellanova Co for about $36 billion. Mars has brands such as Mars, M&Ms and Snickers while Kellavova has brands such as Pringles and Pop-Tarts. Kellanova was formed when Kellogg’s divided the cereal brands into Kellogg’s and the rest into Kellanova in 2023. The offered is for $83.50 a share a 33% premium from the price on August 2.

Mars has a 4.54% of the US snacking market, while Kellanova has a 3.9% share, the market leader is PepsiCo with a 18.8% share. The last acquisition of Mars was Wrigley in 2008.

It is expected because there are few overlaps for the antitrust regulators not to agree to the merger, once the deal should be completed in mid 2025. Kellanova will become a part of Mars Snacking led by global President Andrew Clarke, based in Chicago. The present CEO of Kellanova Steve Cahillane announced he would be leaving the company. Mr. Cahillane previously worked at Coca-Cola.

In the pandemic, snack food companies led by Pepsi were able to increase prices, retain market share and increase profits, but this helped inflation go up. Mars CEO Poul Weihrauch said he aims to hold prices steady and not pass on costs from the deal to consumers. Mr. Weihaunch said we are a big and strong company.

Analysts say the deal is a bet that people will continue to buy branded products over cheaper alternatives or buying private label goods. (the brand of your local supermarket).

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as you move through your daily life you can see companies that are potential investments. Many of the companies are not sexy but very dependable in revenues and profits and you can relatively easy monitor your investments. If you are a buyer, are others? do you like the product or service? do you get good value? if the answer is yes, then you can do your homework whether to invest or not in the company. If the company is profitable, then it is easier decision to make and it is easier to decide to hold the shares or seek alternatives.

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

If you think about the California gold rush in 1848, the state of California was sparsely populated as the bulk of the population of the US lived on the east coast. Trains tracks had not been laid across the US and people had to travel on horse or oxen drawn carts or take a ship. If you took a ship from New York it had to go around the tip of South America and come north to California. It was a long journey and anyone who has been on a long journey asks is there a short cut? It turns out Central America offered a short cut and eventually the country of Panama was chosen.

The French had tried to build a canal, but there were many obstacles and many of their people died of sickness. The US overtook the process and completed the canal and ships had a short cut. At the time, the US took ownership of the Canal Zone and when they did, they did not ask about whose land it was or being used for, the land was going to be a canal, and the canal was built.

In an article by Peter Goodman of the New York Times News Service, the canal has a problem – all the water in the canal is fresh water but there was been a long standing drought in Panama. It used to be 36-38 ships a day could pass, but that has fallen to 22 ships a day. Those totals meant over a year 13,000 ships most them load with containers went through, the totals have fallen to 10,000.

Given the number of containers, there are many ideas of what to do? Build a railway to off load some of the containers on one side and put them back on the other side? Gain access to more fresh water?

Vasquez Morales is the administrator of the Panama Canal which is both the economic heart of the region and a central artery for global trade. More than half of the containers moving from Asia to the East Coast ports passes through the Panama Canal.

The Canal is 80 kilometers and typically takes 12 hours to go through. The canal is a series of locks which function as ladders to Lake Gatun and then down again. In terms of water usage, a single ship needs about 50 million gallons of water. The waters of Lake Gatun is the source of more than half of Panama’s drinking water for more than 4.4 million people.

This year there was rain and the fresh water rose in the Canal making Mr. Morales happy as he likes it when there is a rainy day.

Lower water levels make the Lake more salty, which is something to avoid. There is a solution to build a dam on the Rio Indio. At the time of building the canal, governmental mindset was this was an economic solution to our problems and people in the area have to adjust. Now days, it is important to talk to the people who would be affected by the dam as lands would be flooded. Government will decide what is more important and what compensation is offered.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, most of us have grown up with the idea of economic progress and those of us who benefited still believe that economic progress is a good thing. As years go by we can ask was building particular infrastructure a good thing? sometimes the answer was probably no, but it was in the name of economic progress. As times evolve the number of stakeholders change and compensation levels change, if the company you invest in has evolved, that is a good thing. There is no perfect answer for economic progress but one hopes benefits are seen by the majority than the few. Sometimes owning shares in profitable companies allow for seeing the options for all.

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

On the stock market there are lots of moving parts and cycles in the economy, however one thing is certain when former highflyer shares are down, at some point various hedge funds will take positions. The hedge funds will examine the company and if it has good solid bones to build from and underlying value that under the correct positions be unleashed, then that is even better. For other companies, if they are reasonably consistent with their earnings, then they have more freedom to execute their strategic plans. One of those stocks which was a highflyer is Starbucks.

In an article by Svea Herbst-Bayliss, Granth Vanaik and Waylon Cunningham of Reuters, the Board of Directors announced Brian Niccol, the CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc is taking on the job of CEO of Starbucks. The announcement sent the shares up 20%.

The backstory is in March of 2023, Laxman Narasimhan took over as CEO to engineer a reinvention, but the stock did not respond under his leadership as it went down 25%. As CEO Mr. Narasimhan was under pressure from Elliot Investment Management which owns a $2 billion stake to do things to increase the price of the stock. Another hedge fund with a large holding is Trian Fund Management which has many discussions with Disney.

Starbucks has faced increased competition and slower sales in its 2 biggest markets – China and the US. It was not helped with the working from home as many of its shops were located in or near office buildings.

Over at Chipotle, under Mr. Niccol’s leadership sales have grown every year and the stock has more than tripled. According to Thomas Hayes, Chair of Great Hill Capital, Mr. Niccol is a fixer and a doer and an executor. Mr. Niccol begins work at Starbucks on September 9.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as long as the company is profitable, investors worry less who is the CEO, but once it loses money then the spotlight is on the executive team. Is it the correct one? how will they get back to profitability? If you own shares in a profitable company, all you need to worry is about the strategic plan and its execution, are they doing it well? There is always a worry, just some are easier to handle than others.

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

If you ever watched Star Trek or know something about it, you will know the main character was Captain Kirk and the other leading character was Spock. The character played by Leonard Nimoy was the science officer and first officer and came from the planet Vulcan. Did you know for many years there was a planet Vulcan?

There is a book called The Hunt for Vulcan written by Thomas Levenson published by Random House, NY, 2015.

Have you ever looked at the sky and wondered how it worked? Perhaps you just looked at cloud formations to see pictures in the sky and were content with that. There are people who wondered and did the next step to try to figure out how things worked. One of the key people was Aristotle from Greece and because he was the first to teach or write it down, all the planets are related to the Greek Gods. In Aristotle’s day, the explanation for the how and the why of any phenomenon related to the planets which people could see was planetary motion: the planets riding on rotating spheres. If you jump to Sir Issac Newton’s time, he came up with a better explanation – gravity. You may have heard of the story of an Apple falling on Newton’s head and he called in gravity. This law could be applied equally to everything in the universe and math and physics developed an explanation.

In the 1850’s Urban Jean Joseph Le Verrier discovered the planet Neptune. His rational for Neptune was Nepture was God of the sea and Jupiter’s brother. Saturn was both Jupiter and Neptune’s brother and Uranus was Saturn’s father. Le Verrier was promoted to head of the Paris Observatory in 1854. One of his tasks was to figure out why the planet Mercury did not confirm to all the other planets direct path around the sun. Mercury deviated a little bit called the perihelion shift. There must be a logical, sound reason and many including Le Verrier thought it was due to a planet or comets interfering with the gravity forces to push Mercury off.

People examined the night sky, most are passionate amateurs, but the professionals vertify. It was the case that an passionate viewer Dr. Lescarbault’s saw something and passed the information onto Le Verrier who confirmed the findings and a new planet Venus’ husband. the lord of the forge or Vulcan was named.

Dr. Lescarbault saw the planet, others said they did, but many could not. However the sky is big and complex, and the best opportunity to verify was during a solar eclipses. Even Thomas Edison was involved in looking at the Eclipse and hoping the clouds did not block their view. No shows are hardly alien to science. Theories predict. Ever since Newton’s ideas evolved to subjecting nature to mathematics, this has come to mean that particular solutions to systems of equations can be interpreted as physical phenomena. More theories arise and the math tries to evolve and many times it does.

A new visionary arrived in the 1905 when Albert Einstein produced 4 new works on theoretical physics including what we now know as quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. He showed light was not straight, but it bent, if light bends so does gravity. In addition, gravity bends time.

Einstein worked with various math professors to understand the variation of Mercury’s orbit and the planet Vulcan disappeared from the maps in 1915 only to arise in connection to a fictional character on a TV show.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in investing there are multiple theories on what is the best strategy and if you make money looking backwards, those ones worked. The magic of Wall Street is the only perfect information is past information or history and does history repeat itself. There are definite cycles in the market, but can you capture the top to sell and the bottom to buy? One strategy is to invest most of your money in profitable companies which pay a dividend and although the stocks will go up and down, the dividends can pay you while you wait for the top. In every cycle, at some point profitable stocks will trade at higher multiples than non-profitable stocks and most of the stocks on the exchange are non-profitable ones. However sometimes the percentage of growth is higher, but often with high flyers, they descend back to where they started. Learning never goes out of fashion.

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

Hopefully over the summer, you watch or caught clips of the many athletes at the Olympics. Some of the settings were amazing and highlighted the best of Paris and France. Ideally you were exposed to many different athletic competitions, even though you likely had your favorites and maybe someone who you were cheering for won a gold medal or a medal or a personal best. The competition is one aspect of the Olympics. There are 2 other aspects – city building or spending on infrastructure and product placement or advertising.

In an article by Shelia Dang and Mimosa Spencer of Reuters, part of the cost to hold the Olympics is paid by sponsors and they have exclusive rights to marketing their products and services. In Paris, a new level was brought forth and expect the 2028 Olympics in LA to surpass it.

Most of the people who sat in the stands had a cellphone and the Paris Olympics made the most of it. Winning athletes in Paris received their medals on Louis Vuitton trays before being handed a Samsung flip phone to take a victory selfie. None of that happened by chance.

18 months ago, Samsung began talks with the IOC or International Olympic Committee to plot the product placement drive. The boundary-pushing of wares by high-profile sponsors LVMH and Samsung is illustrative of how sponsors are seeking new commercial opportunities from an event that has strict rules around advertising inside competition venues.

Samsung said the strategy was driving awareness of the new Galaxy Z Flip6 globally. Samsung has not provided details on sales.

At LVMH, online searches grew 43% in the US during the first week of the games according to digital analysis provider Captify. LVMH owns a number of brands including Dior, Louis Vuitton.

Organizers of the Olympics in LA will be embracing the trend of Paris and more as LA is head of entertainment in the US. The games will cost $6.9 billion which will privately funded through a combination of sponsorship, ticket revenue, broadcast and merchandise revenues. The sponsorship total is $2 billion and LA officials say they are at about $1 billion.

Henry Poole, VP of marketing solutions at Excel Sports Management says LA’s reputation as a city that oozes celebrity glamour, wealth and ostentation was a tantalizing prospect for sponsorships.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, most events have sponsorships and if you like the event and the sponsorship you may be glad the companies gave money. As an investor you want tangible feedback that sponsorships actually help sales which helps makes profits to pay dividends.

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