Recently heard on the radio, the average reader of books, non fiction is read 2 times more than fiction, being below the numbers the book The Mask of Troy by David Gibbins published by Headline Publishing Group, London, UK, 2010 was read. It is an interesting read particularly if you have a limited idea about Troy and Homer. In the last number of years, movies about Troy have come out and maybe that is why the book was written. The story is an archaeologist is digging through Troy which was destroyed when it lost the Trojan wars. The archaeologist finds riches, but there is more meaning. What if the battle is not necessarily about gaining territory for the leader, but the changing from the bronze age to the iron age? What if prior to the battle, the metal for armaments was controlled and peace was the result. With a change to the iron age, anyone could make weapons, and those that learnt quickly could control the empire or build new ones.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, for many companies there are alternatives, those alternatives are often times not feasible or not widely available for the mythical average consumer. But when they are: the world for those markets change dramatically. One aspect of owning stocks is looking at the alternatives – what does it take before it is time to switch? There will be clues along the way, declining margins, revenues stalling, when you see it there are alternatives in the marketplace and you will need to move your money to ensure you keep more of it.

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

Most of people look to the skies and wonder, what is up there? We look to mountains and think what if we ever went to the top, where few have ever gone, besides the view would we be closer to …? The skills required to climb the mountain can be translated to another quest. In various parts of the world, the water has made caves and there is an active group of people who are fascinated and well-trained to go into caves. Over the years, the author has gone into very small caves, ones with big openings and gone underground as a tourist to look at mines; however they had lots of light and were very well-regulated. The caving that Blind Descent written by James Tabor published by Random House, NY, 2011 is the journey to the deepest cave on earth. There are two very deep caves and the ones that go the furthest in the ground are to found in Mexico and in Uzbekistan. The book is very interesting to read, because to go caving is to be able to solve problems generally in the dark. While some openings have greater light, much of the work is in the dark. Besides that aspect, water made the cave, which means the cave is going to be wet, with some areas lake size water, and some glorious waterfalls, however the water does provide clues to where the openings to be found in order to go deeper. One can imagine that dealing with the dark, the wet, if something goes wrong it is hard to fix, but the feeling of going deeper than any person has before is a driver. In caving, not all openings are walkable, sometimes there are tunnels, sometimes there are tunnels that will be blocked with rocks and the caver will have to back up. The physical and emotional abilities are very much at work inside the cave.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the caves the dividend payers like are the well established, with lots of light type. Discovering new depths is for others. One can very much appreciate the training, the mapping of new knowledge, the adaptability and the desire to go under, it is generally not something one wants to do. With your dividends you can enjoy the sunshine or be a sponsor or admire the approach and preparation needed to do the caving.

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

Warren Buffett greatest success is investing in companies that have a moat which means investing in companies with strong brands, a history of high profit margins and dominant or semi-dominant in their industry. In similar terms they have a moat around them which helps keeps new competition out and margins for their goods and services high, although the prices can be very competitive. Charles Martin who works with Thompson Reuters writing in the Globe and Mail, May 20 offered some methods to figure out which companies have a good moat.

First criteria was the market cap had to be $ 5 billion or more.

Add earnings per share growth rates at least 5% compounded annually over the past 10 years.

Further add revenue growth of at least 10% compounded annually in the past 3 years.

Other criteria include lower debt-to-equity ratio than their peers; higher net profit margins and a history of share backbacks.

In addition, he used a Thompson Reuters product called StarMine to identify if the earnings were likely to continue.

20 Companies fit the bill from a wide variety of industry groups.

Company              Ticker                   Mkt Cap    EPS     Net Profit   Revenue/       Total Debt          52 Week Price   Dividend

Margin       Share              to Total Equity    Change %      Yield

VISA                       V-N                        167,980      41.5        42.7           12.4                     0                             29.5               0.6

Nova Nordick     NOVOB-CHP        114,058        21.1         29.8         13.8                    1.8                           55.5               1.4

Qualcomm            QCOM-Q              113,629          15.6        28.5        17.2                    0                              -13.2             2.2

CVS Health           CVS-N                  112,618          13.7          3.3         13.6                  34.1                             30.4             1.1

Nike                        NKE-N                  87,831           13.0        9.7          13.5                   12.7                             37                0.9

TJX                         TJX-N                    44,940        18             7.6         11.3                     38.1                           11.5              1.1

Hermes                  HRMS-PAR            39,430      15.5          20.9       13.2                       1.2                          30.5              2.4

Magna                     MG-T                     22,980         9.6             5.1      12.9                      11.9                           22.4             1.4

Monster Beverage  MNST-Q               22,112         38.4         19.6     14.8                      0                                 85.5            0

Ross Stores              ROST-Q                20,946        22.9          8.4     12.2                      17.5                             46.4            0.8

Chipotle Mexican G  CMG-N              19,724          50.3          10.8    21.7                     0                                 26                0

F5 Networks              FFIV-Q                9,080           23.3         18.0     16.4                   0                                  20.4            0

Hargreaves Lansdown  HRGL-L         9.071           42.1           45.2     20.8                  0                                 -0.4              1.8

Foot Locker                      FL-N              8,579             8.1             7.3      10.3                   5.4                             25.6             1.4

SEI Investments              SEIC-Q          7,732             8.8            25.2     13.4                  0.0                             44.0            1.0

Williams Sonoma             WSM-N        6,945             7.3             6.6      12.3                  0.2                               17.8            1.7

FactSet Research Sys       FDS-N            6,801           15.7            23.0    11.0                  0                                 52.9            0.9

Partner Re                          PRE-N            6,411            8.4            15.4      15.6                 11.6                              25.7            2.0

AXIS Capital                        AXS-N          5,528             9.3           17.6      11.5                 17.0                              21.1             2.0

Urban Outfitters                 URBN-Q      5,272             12.0            7.0     14.9                 0                                    7.6              0

Linking to Dividend paying stocks, if you look at the second last column over the past 52 weeks 17 of the 20 outperformed the market with gains from 20 to 50%. This means if you own them, your money besides being exposed to less risk outperformed the market which is a win-win. Investing in quality stocks never goes out of style particularly if the desire is to make more. The challenge is to narrow the field and pick the best of the breed.

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

The Corrupt Society by Robert Payne published by Praeger Publishers, NY 1975. The strength of cultures, and their weakness cannot be measured exactly by any known measuring rods. We simply do not know how much residual strength lies in a culture when it is confronted by a powerful enemy determined to destroy it.

The five faces of corruption are old age, conquest, tyranny, treachery and subversion, and clash of cultures.

In Mr. Payne’s book he focuses on society in general and has some very hard to read but descriptive chapters on the Soviet and Labour Camps as well as German Extermination Camps. Although they were from different types of government – one Socialist, one Fascist or one on the extreme left, one on the extreme right, in terms of the camps if you had flown over one of them, they would be remarkably similar in design. They served the same purpose – the planned degradation and destruction of the prisoners. Both camps were the same merciless and arbitrary punishments, the same coarse guards recruited from the criminal class, the same rows of desolate wooden barracks laid down as meticulously as a Roman camp, the same watchtowers and searchlights and barbed-wire entanglements. A heartless, mechanical bureaucracy ruled. Filth and misery and torture reduced the prisoners to mockeries of themselves and only the bravest and luckiest survived. The camps were places where men were stripped of the last vestiges of their human dignity, and this was done deliberately, according to plan, in the manner approved in the appropriate regulation without any feeling of guilt.

What is more terrible is both Stalin and Hitler were kept very much in the loop as to the results and the lists of people who went. Stalin’s camps killed in the range of 25 million people, Hitler killed at least 6 million people, only because the machine broke down during the last 6 months of the war.

Corrupt men/women are always liars. Lies are their instruments, their pleasure, their solace. In time they come to believe their lies or half-believe them. They test out their skill in lying in the Area of Confusion, where they serve their apprenticeship in corruption, and when they have passed through the gate in Toward Absolute Corruption, they lie more adroitly, certain at last they have acquired the keys of power. Corrupt men will choose other corrupt men as allies.

The tragedy of corrupt people gaining access to power is a waste of assets of both money and people, as well as the cynicism that builds up. Where they had been hope there is hopelessness, where they had been courage then is cynicism, where there had been life, there is a living death.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, it is never hard to find corruption of one sort or another, it is harder to ensure that power works for the many. As shareholders, you have choices what to do with your dividend, but the priority is to invest in a company which pays a dividend. As shareholders, we believe that our companies are doing good and providing hope in the world, which is why our companies can continue to make profits to pay the dividends.

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

The Corrupt Society by Robert Payne published by Praeger Publishers, NY 1975. The strength of cultures, and their weakness cannot be measured exactly by any known measuring rods. We simply do not know how much residual strength lies in a culture when it is confronted by a powerful enemy determined to destroy it.

The five faces of corruption are old age, conquest, tyranny, treachery and subversion, and clash of cultures

Corruption by Treachery and Subversion

A society invaded from within can give all the appearance of health, but it reality the signs were clear to see it was not healthy One of the best corrupters from within was Hitler and France. Starting in 1938, the Germans spent vast amounts in France to give money to the press from editor to journalist; lawyers, army and navy officers, and many politicians. The Germans compiled a list of thousands of people biography and asking how to push the right buttons that they would accept bribes. When the Germans crossed the French line, little bloodshed happened.

Corruption does have its limitations, people and countries play both sides off to become neutral.

Corruption by Clash of Cultures

Mr. Payne is talking about the wasteland of books such as those by Dostoyevsky which a character of a nihilist emerge. They believe in nothing, has no roots, does not abide by human values, rejects all authority and regards himself outside of the mainstream of culture. If there is poverty and hopelessness, wherever people have no reasons to go on living. In many cities around the world, the areas are not hard to find.

Mr. Payne’s book is a good read to ensure hope and openness are hallmarks of the countries we live in.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in some ways the companies in general help make the problem bigger, although there are plenty of exceptions. As shareholders we want the companies to pay dividends and make profits, how they do it is not our number one concern. Whether they do it is. There are exceptions to the rules, there are many companies trying to give hope to people in general as well as providing great goods and services. Try to invest in them.

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

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The Corrupt Society by Robert Payne published by Praeger Publishers, NY 1975. The strength of cultures, and their weakness cannot be measured exactly by any known measuring rods. We simply do not know how much residual strength lies in a culture when it is confronted by a powerful enemy determined to destroy it.

The five faces of corruption are old age, conquest, tyranny, treachery and subversion, and clash of cultures. Before describing the faces, there are many weapons that can be used to prevent the corruption of societies. The most powerful are vigilance and knowledge. Some of this will be through the press but it is important there is a free flow of information (the internet helps) for in the words of Tomas Paine: Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.  The least corrupt societies are those that are the most open, where the responsibility is shared among all the people, where there is no privileged class and there no vast differences in wealth. Corruption enters as soon as the government is managed on behalf of special interests against the interests of the people. Once corrupt it is very hard to put the genie back in the bottle.

1. Corruption by Old Age

Society lives on past glories, celebrates its ancient arts, but the words spoken are the same as the past hundreds of years. If you are living on past glories, you are not looking at the new. What could be? Opening the window for air to breathe and the life of the people worth living again. If the people are not looking towards the future, the society may continue to function but one day someone will change it.

2. Corruption by Conquest

In many countries, a strong ruler was in place and did good, however he (it tended to be a male) left no natural rulers or the country is both weak and divided against itself. The normal pattern the country breaks up. A political structure can tolerate and absorb an almost limitless amount of petty corruption. It cannot tolerate and absorb the corruption of the spirit that comes about when the conquerors assume the role of masters and conquered accept the role of the servants. What tends to happen is the masters begin to believe they are the masters; the servants know if they can retain their sense of identity they can outlast the masters.

3. Corruption by Tyranny

When a country has either surrender to a tyrant or been tricked into granting him full powers, the process of corruption begins. The tyrant ruling by decree, sooner or later finds out his decrees are based on a small amount of information available to reflect the situation. The people around him know even less and misinformation is the norm because the leader is a tyrant. The concentration of power in a single man chokes the off the best energies of the nation; all must be subservient to him and the power he seized is used to maintain him in power. If money corrupts, vast sums of money corrupts vastly.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as shareholders we elect Boards of Directors who elect Presidents to run the company. How well they are open to process, how the President runs the company is important. We must be willing to ensure the company beside making money has a reasonably open process.

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

In our everyday lives, most of us go through life with the opportunities and challenges it faces us, it helps a great deal if our incomes allow us to live a reasonable life. As we look around the world and include our own countries we can easily see greater income disparities. Those who have investments in dividend paying companies, wonder if those companies are stable and secure enough for little to happen to it. If you work for a company, it has a culture in it, hopefully it has done good as defined by the standards set out for it both economically and its impact to the communities it serves. but all is never perfect, by the very nature of things cultures are fragile. They can be easily destroyed, however they can also continue to survive. Cultures can be deformed and defaced by conquerors and tyrants and yet survive as long as there are a few people determined to make them survive. These words were written in the book The Corrupt Society by Robert Payne published by Praeger Publishers, NY 1975. The strength of cultures, and their weakness cannot be measured exactly by any known measuring rods. We simply do not know how much residual strength lies in a culture when it is confronted by a powerful enemy determined to destroy it.

What we can do is isolate some of the factors that allow culture to endure: courage, willpower, vigor, a sense of common traditions that bind people together, and their determination to preserve a way of life that satisfies and enriches them. If the arts are flourishing, if the people have a common purpose, if their natural spontaneity is encouraged, we can be sure that the essential core of a nation is healthy; if the opposite it is unhealthy. From a culture point of view the artists are usually the indicators of the strength of a culture.

Confucius said that if you want to know the spirit of the people, you only have to listen to their songs. A modern observer only has to study the arts of a country to know whether it is healthy or corrupt. Paintings, literature and music tell us more than presidential speeches. A presidential speech should flow or it should have live in it.

How does one recognize a corrupt society? People go through the motions of living. The forces of death are stronger than the forces of life, where hope has vanished, where the essential structure is in a state of dissolution and nothing has evolved. Human hopes revolve around the family, and the disintegration of family life also provides a measure of corruption.

A corrupt society has its own language, a corrupted form of an otherwise healthy language, and its own laws, which are the natural laws turned upside down. The basic law is a single word: Obey. The basic aim is conformity. The basic weapons are the well-tried weapons of military force, threats of arrest and deceit. No one should estimate the power of deceit to keep a terrified people in subjection.

Healthy societies are always different, corrupt societies are all alike.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as buyers of stocks for a longer time period, often we buy because of very good past results and we expect them to continue. All companies go in cycles, business cycles, management cycles, as a shareholder you want to recognize when the company goes into decay so you can buy something else.

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

The last number of posts were from a book called The Impact Equation written by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith published by Portfolio Books/Penguin, NY, 2012 will help the social media releases create impact with the formula Impact = C x (R+E+A+T+E)  or CREATE. The letters stand for Contrast, Reach, Exposure, Articulation, Trust and Echo. In thinking about this book, it relates very well to the Apple Watch. If you have seen the ads, which seem wonderful, the Apple Watch size means you are not going to a great deal of reading but you will catch the headlines or reminders. The author has a watch which has a clock and a date on it, but is not made by Apple however it is near the same size. In the advertisements for the new watch, you will be connected to the web but the writing will be hard to see or it maybe difficult to read a great deal of material. This translates to the information you want is essentially the headlines which means those short sentences have to be impactful to make a difference.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the new products such as Apple Watch begins to change the way we continually use information and how we receive it. It will not affect everyone right away but as you look to the future you need to ask how do the companies you invest in react to innovations such as the Apple Watch. Apple did an excellent method to launch the product – it announced the Watch was coming; it highlighted the company as a leading innovation company; it gave a date; it delivered on time and beat expectations of the market. Learning from Apple is a good thing.

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

In today’s business world using social media is part of the strategy but similar to other aspects of life, some with be good and others not so. The book The Impact Equation written by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith published by Portfolio Books/Penguin, NY, 2012 will help the social media releases create impact with the formula Impact = C x (R+E+A+T+E)  or CREATE. The letters stand for Contrast, Reach, Exposure, Articulation, Trust and Echo.

Trust think of the word Why? why are you doing this?

Trust is about confidence and reliability. We tend to know if we can trust someone or not. How can we tell if someone trust us?

One definition is C*R*I/S = Trust where C is Creditability; R = Reliability; I = Intimacy and S = Self-Interest

Credibility is what you say that can actually be backed up by your credentials

Reliability is what happens when you do what you say you will do.

Intimacy is all levels of closeness between individuals, often for personal reasons other than business

Self-interest is knowing how to listen.

The trick is to be human.

Echo

Echo is about finding common experiences and using them to help people realize that you have some understanding of their lives.

1. Use their language

2. Find common ground

3. Share your feelings

When you do the above prove it and connect to people on a daily basis.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the companies that you own, besides being profitable and paying you a dividend why do you own them. Hopefully you believe they are also good corporate citizens that prove to their customers on a daily basis. If they do that then the rules are easily followed. If not, look for blips in the stock prices as they react to things they do not do well.

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