In everyone’s life, there will be some people and companies you like better than others. There are many reasons but if we take it for a given, in terms of relationship building people do business with people they like. To discuss what likability is and how you can do better in it, Michelle Lederman wrote The 11 Laws of Likability published by American Management Association, NY, 2012. How do you ensure there are true win-win situations and you will hopefully note the laws can be applied to life in general.

Law 8 – The Law of Mood Memory

People tend to remember how you said something rather than what you said or you should be in a good mood. The mood is seen through your words – try to positive frame your words; your body language tells a story – eye contact, smiling, posture, reaction to what people say and leave the person feeling good.

Law 9 – The Law of Familiarity

People feel comfortable with who and what they know. Send cards – congratulations which increases familiarity and the positive mood memory you are associated with. Use social media and send notes. Remember the idea is to be in the person’s circle not in their face.

Law 10 – The Law of Giving

Think what can I do for you? There are extraordinary value in doing things because you want to, not because you expect anything in return. Giving creates value. Remember what goes around, comes around.

Law 11 – The Law of Patience

Sometimes patience is a virtue, sometimes you wish it would come faster. Learning to give it time, things will happen. If you are baking a cake turning up the temperature does not make it bake faster. It takes time. Patience to find similarities, to build relationships, to establish trust and to create familiarity. Many relationships evolve over time. Have patience.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, having patience means to look at the dividend first and the capital gain will come. As long as the dividend is easily payable the company is profitable which means the stock price will go up. Having the dividend allows for the markets to go up and down and you be rewarded.

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

In everyone’s life, there will be some people and companies you like better than others. There are many reasons but if we take it for a given, in terms of relationship building people do business with people they like. To discuss what likability is and how you can do better in it, Michelle Lederman wrote The 11 Laws of Likability published by American Management Association, NY, 2012. How do you ensure there are true win-win situations and you will hopefully note the laws can be applied to life in general.

Law 4 – The Law of Energy

Energy or the vibe you give off is derived from your natural personality and your actual mood at the moment. The key is not to be the happiest person in the room, but the most sincere. Learning how to put out the right energy at the right time in the right place and doing is authentically is a fundamental part of effectively connecting with others.

Law 5 – The Law of Curiosity

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it has never killed a conversation. Showing genuine curiosity about a person’s job, life, interests, opinions or needs is a great way to start a conversation, keep it going and create connections.

Remember love to talk, you just need to know how to get them going. A good conversation involves give and take; it is an exchange in which two people are genuinely engaged, listening, responding and connecting to each other. Start with the general and once it gets going the subject can flow into the next one and next one.

Start with open-ended questions or those that require an answer longer than yes or no. Use probing questions and remember your goal is discover what you have in common and what value you might bring to that person. The broad headlines are pose a hypothetical, seek advice, compliment. Be curious but do not be a stalker.

Law 6 – The Law of Listening

We have 2 ears and one mouth, listening should be easy. it is not. Listening is not a passive activity. It takes energy and concentration to focus on what people are saying and what they mean by it and not to just hear what you think they mean by it or what you want them to mean by it. Listening is a skill which needs constant working on.

Law 7 – The Law of Similarity

People like people who are like them. Realizing we share a connection with someone else put us at ease and opens the door to discovering further things you have in common which builds greater relationships. People trust the sources they know best.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, whether in life or investing being curious is a great thing. While companies which pay dividends have a great track record of continuing to pay them, you have to be curious because the internet has changed companies business models and if they do not respond, those profits will shrink putting the dividend at risk. The curious person keeps track of the broad goings on in the world.

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

In everyone’s life, there will be some people and companies you like better than others. There are many reasons but if we take it for a given, in terms of relationship building people do business with people they like. To discuss what likability is and how you can do better in it, Michelle Lederman wrote The 11 Laws of Likability published by American Management Association, NY, 2012. How do you ensure there are true win-win situations and you will hopefully note the laws can be applied to life in general.

Law 1 – The Law of Authenticity

Each of us are unique or individuals, when we meet other people – that is what others are looking for. For many, as someone gets promoted they feel they need to act as it seems a successful person in my position would, which can be stressful if you do not include the parts that make you the individual you are. Authenticity is who you are – your honest reactions, your natural energy. Sharing what is real about you is the key to building real relationships with others. When you show your authentic self, people will respond in kind, laying the bedrock for mutual understanding. connections and growth.

How to be authentic – do not try, just be. Cultivate the connections that you want to have, not the ones you think you should have. Build relationships with the people you enjoy, If you have to deal with people you do not like, try to find the good in them, hopefully they are in a position because they do something good.

Law 2 – The Law of Self-Image

The first step is when you look in the mirror, do you like you? Perception is reality, and self-image is self-perception. Focus on what you can do, not on what you can’t do or Ack! I can’t do this to Yes it is going to be difficult but I know I am capable of it and it will get done!

There is an expression – Fake it till you make it. The expression in reality is Fake it till you make it real. The idea is stretching your comfort zone till it becomes the new normal. The first time you do something you may or may not know, if you fake it till you learn it, you are living the expression.

Law 3 – The Law of Perception

We all make first impressions, it would be hard to function without doing it. This law says it is easier to make a good first impression than to change a bad one. There are a number of reasons why make the first impression – different styles, inconsistent communication and self-doubt. Remember Total Liking – 7% verbal plus 38% vocal plus 55% facial. The words you have spoken mean little if your body is not backing it up. You need to be consistent and have an open mind.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, there are many to choose from, some you will like more than others. We all have a rating system why pick A instead B, that is natural and there is nothing wrong with it. Just remember with likability of a person, you will have biases, often that can be offset with a diversified portfolio. If you are picking dividend paying stocks there are few wrong picks and many good returns.

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

There is an old saying about advertising – 50% works, 50% does not, the problem is no one knows which 50% works. In the book The Manipulators by Jeffery Robinson published by Simon & Schuster, London 1998, Mr. Robinson looks at the 50% that should be working.

In all retail environments, sales reports are generated and those items which seem to be not selling need to be fixed. Sometimes it is because the item is on a narrow item which means if the store is busy people may not stop and check it out. Moving the item to a different location fixes the problem. Logistics is often a obvious solution but it is overlooked. Logistics means looking at the location of the lines leading to the cash register what does it block? what impulse items does it enhance?  A simple example is at one store they catered to teenagers, but the racks were higher than average teenager could assess? lowering the racks resulted in higher sales. In terms of displaying items, how do customers approach the shelves – straight or from an angle? could the product be turned to result in higher sales?

Advertising has 2 prime objectives – one is to increase the number of customers who will buy the product and the second is to increase the amount of product those customers will buy. If we buy what we need, watching and understanding how people act the way they do, changing the behaviour can lead to more sales. For example, most people turn right, this means the displays on the right will do better. In the airport waiting area – people will walk across the aisle for food, they will not walk for a magazine. Next time you are in the airport look what is on both sides of the aisle.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, there are a wide variety of methods which companies try to understand people who will buy their products. No one has figure out everything yet but the methods to capture data increase every year. Those that pay more attention to targeting ads on the internet see it more often. While most of us tend to be interested in a few subjects, it does mean the focus of your ads is very narrow indeed. What that mean in the future is an unknown.

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

There is an old saying about advertising – 50% works, 50% does not, the problem is no one knows which 50% works. In the book The Manipulators by Jeffery Robinson published by Simon & Schuster, London 1998, Mr. Robinson looks at the 50% that should be working. Advertising is more of an art than science, but over the years billions of data have been gathered and analyzed to make it more of a science. When it works it is like magic, when it does not work it is seemingly easy to see why, but those ads still get made. The goal of advertising is for you to buy something, but why are we buying is the reason why the ads should work or work better. The searching for the why leads to understanding how emotions work and the brain works and crafting the message to it. Companies often focus their marketing efforts around their advertising spend whatever they can to tell us what the product is and what it will do for us. They are betting that once informed we will make a rational judgement to buy or not to buy. How are rational our judgement is becomes another matter. Most of the time we buy on emotion, justify on fact afterwards.  What is more most of the time we are not buying goods or services, we are buying solutions that we hope will suit us.

Many of us shop at supermarkets and that is where the theory meets the practice very well. The average person tends to buy 2 or 3% of what is in the store, the makers of the products need to use every technique in the book to make you pick their product. The average supermarket carries about 20,000 items, each of the products has been packaged, advertised and displayed for you to buy it. This translates to a 60% of the purchases at the supermarket tend to be impulse buys. This means there is a reason why stores need you to walk around it and the basics are in the 4 corners. The aisles are set up purposely to encourage this and grouped around family of products. On your list is a basic food, shelved near by is many other choices which are related to your basic food choice. You are thinking as long as I buying the basic, maybe I will pick up something related to the item.

On the best shelves are those with the biggest margins which encourages greater turnover. The shelf is at eye level for the normal person. The items closest to the floor have the lowest turnover. Research has shown our eyes tend to move vertically first going up, then down. The exception to the rule is when a company has given the company money to be placed in a better location. Another rule is shelves must be kept full, few people will buy the last item, but a full shelf is a great temptation.

Some products while seemingly for adults are for kids and the companies attempt to ensure the kids will demand the item while the parents are shopping.  The lighting is soft lighting, the stores are air-conditioned, there are impulse items at the cashier and a host of other things designed for you to spend more than you had planned to spend.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, many of the companies which pay dividends over the years are to be found in the supermarket which means the companies are getting it right more often. While grocery shopping can be a chore, once in while look around to see how the companies are trying to encourage you to buy their products. All the products have been designed by somebody who wants you to buy, which of them did not get it right and what would you do to change it?

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

Interest rates are low which if you are a borrower and have access to low rates is wonderful; it is even better if your cash flows allows to easily pay off the loans. At some point, the fed is going to raise rates or maybe it will be after the presidential election. If conditions improve in the economy, the fed will want to raise rates which will have an impact on the stock market. If you could be guaranteed a 5% plus return by buying bonds, would you move some money into bonds? The answer is likely yes. There will be a variety of reports trying to figure out which companies could be the winners and  a report by Ian Tam under the heading Stocks that Could Benefit from Rising Rates was published in the Globe and Mail. Mr. Tam works at Morningstar Research.

Thesis: US companies in interest rate sensitive sectors.

Factors: some companies do better than others – financials, consumer cyclicals, and industrials

Ranking by Yield, Cash Flow to Debt; Industry-relative debt to equity; forward p/e

Limiting Factors:  market cap must be a minimum of $6 billion, dividend payout ratio of < 80%.

Rank    Company                          Ticker          Mkt Cap    Yield   Forward  Cash Flow Industry Relative   Payout Ratio

US Bil       %             P/E           to Debt       debt to equity           %

1.     Everest Re Group               RE-N              8.101         2.08        8.83           2.05            0.24                          13

2.    T Rowe Price                       TROW-Q      20.333        2.67       16.04           n/c              0                              40.35

3.     ADP                                       ADP-Q          38.932        2.36      25.05           67.88          0                              64.88

4.     Fastenal                                FAST-Q       12.310          2.67      23.27            n/c              0                              59.95

5.     Expeditors of Wash            EPD-Q           9.173          1.5        21.56             3.49            0                                31.22

6.    Foot Locker                            FL-N             8.716          1.6         15.58            5.16             0.08                         24.2

7.    Williams-Sonoma                WSM-N          7.362         1.74       23.11             n/c              0                               41.43

8.    Robert Half Int’l                   RHI-N            7.556         1.43       20.95          368.18         0                               31.09

9.    Genuine Parts                         GPC-N         13.772        2.72       18.97           1.8                0.26                         50.43

10.   Dick’s Sporting Goods         DKS-N            6.391       1.02       16.97            9.21             0.05                         17.61

Linking to dividend paying companies, all the above pay a dividend which allows many choices to make and changing the criteria will add or subtract other companies, the important aspect is to narrow your field and pick the best of the best. There are many choices within the dividend paying companies.

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

There are many ways to find value on the stock market and one of them is called EVA or economic value added. EVA is a measure of the economic profit generated by a business over a given time by business over a given time period. Nick Winch is an account manager for Inovestor Inc which has a program called StockPointer which can measure EVA. In an article he was looking for the best companies with the strongest EVA in the past year and in addition had to have positive EVA for the past 1 year and 2 years. The EVA is difference between its profit and cost of investments to make that profit. In the article US Creating Shareholder Wealth published on June 23 in the Globe and Mail, Mr. Winch showed the top 20, the list below is top 15.

Company                            Ticker       Mkt Cap      EVA         EVA/Mkt Cap       Dividend Yield           P/E

(S Billl)      ($ Mill)             %                    %

Gilead Sciences                  GILD-Q     178.410      14,632        8.20                 1.44                            13.78

American Airlines                AAL-Q        29.548        1.967        6.66                 .0.96                            9.33

Apple                                    AAPL-Q    734.244      21,092       5.31                   1.64                           15.75

Autozone                             AZO-N         21.092        1,094       5.19                   0.0                              19.73

Lockheed Martin                  LMT-N         60.544        2,853       4.71                   3.14                            17.36

Cigna                                      CI-N          42.776        1,918       4.48                    0.03                           20.93

Avago Tech                         AVGO-N        37.089      1,597        4.31                   1.15                            61.55

Mead Johnson                       MJN-N         18.481         785        4.25                    1.81                           25.63

Intergrys Energy                    TEG-N           5.672         236        4.16                    3.78                            22.66

Moody’s                                 MCO-N          22.271       922        4.34                     1.14                           23.38

Amgen                                  AMGN-Q       123.743     5,009      4.05                     1.97                           21.96

CH Robinson Worldwide      CHRW-Q           9.383         375     4.00                     2.37                           20.43

L Brands                                    LB-N          25.413          940     3.71                      2.34                           22.82

Boeing                                        BA-N        100.702       3,642    3.62                     2.51                           18.23

Linking to dividend paying stocks, there are many methods to try to figure out if the company is the one where you should place your money into. Great companies tend to be a the top of any list which is good, from the above most of the companies pay a dividend which means you have lots of choices even by defining must pay a dividend. In the market we all have perfect information looking backwards, when we look forward we know there will be ups and downs, but there are methods to protect yourself and one method is looking for dividends. If the stock goes down in price and continues to pay a dividend you will be earning something. If you look at Apple with which has the greatest market capitalization and EVA there is lots of protection for you.

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

Last weekend the summer was shining and off to the fishing pond was on the agenda. The song Gone Fishing was on my mind for two wonderful singers sang it – Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby. My skills are limited for my attendance is more yearly than anything else, perhaps in the future it will change. After fishing with the group in which no fish were caught on my line, a radio interview caught my attention about how a fisherman fishes. The first step is look at the fishing spot – observe it and see where the fish would likely be, practice patience and seeing what is there. What you are looking for is the ideal place where fish tend to be. If you see a ridge near the drop off of the river bank or lake, the fish are hiding from the insects they eat but looking up to see them. If you think about the process there is a system to it, maybe later in the year the theory will be put to a test.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, with the stock market there are some ebbs and flows to it and many people have a system and once in while they all work. You can operate without one, and similar to going fishing you may catch you a fish, but not always. In reality all you need is a pole with a string and hook on the end. On the other hand if you have a system which allows you to fish where the fish should be or normally are, you will have greater success. Learning about the markets and aiming for consistency for a return on your investment can easily lead you to stocks which pay dividends and offer capital gains.

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

After viewing the paintings of the waterfalls, at the library a booked called The Dammed – Rivers, Dams and the Coming Water Crisis by Fred Pearce published by The Bodley Head, London, UK, 1992 was read. In the paintings the aspect was the beauty of waterfalls and the natural splendor of the waterfall. Another aspect to our civilization is taming those rivers to generate power and reduce flooding. Mr. Pearce focuses on the super dams around the world and are there a benefit or not and his conclusion is for many dams the negatives outweigh the positives.

Although damming a river can bring hydro electricity and many of us think of it as a relatively inexpensive renewable energy source which is good, the effects of the land may not be so good. In many areas of the world, dams are placed in what are considered to be non populated areas, however building the dam changes and often damages the economic activity that people over generations have figured out how to work with what they have. The issues are the lives of the people are often outside the cash economy which means it is hard to measure. The dams in the desert areas are particularly sensitive to this fact because part of the reason the rest of the people down the river exist is the silt moving down from the source of the river, when the river floods essentially gives a fresh layer of earth to the land or manure or natural fertilizer. When the silt is blocked, something has to replace the silt. At the moment, there is nothing.

Another big issue is salt. There is salt in all rocks, when the river flows the salt is washed to the sea. When the river stops flowing, the salt stays on the land and plants do not grow in salty soils. This means the farms lose their agricultural production, the lands become barren and the population is worse off. Badly designed or operated irrigation works create waterlogged soils, which speed up the process. If the water table rises close to the surface, the sun will burn it off and a white salty crust remains. Once that happens few plants if any will grow leading to deserts. The desert means worse storms and an increasing desert.

The last big factor is by slowing down the water allows the water to pool and which allows mosquitos to increase. In some parts of the world, mosquitos carry malaria which causes death to the population. Millions have died from the disease.

If the land is in the temperate zone, the sun will have less of an effect however there will be changes in the land for the land has to react to the river not flowing as it did it in centuries past.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, some of the best are utility stocks because they have dammed the rivers and producing relatively inexpensive hydro with a captive distribution system and a regulatory system which regularly increases prices – as an investor what is not to like. As an effect on the environment, the effects are less in temperate climate zones.

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